Women's Water Polo FINA Junior World Championship 2021

[Makedonas 2,155]

1 hour ago, gilbsh said:

why USA isn't here?

I don't know. I figured Australia and China would skip but thought at least one of USA/Canada would show up

[maestro 653]

Looking further ahead in the tournament, Greece-Italy match wasn't really important as both teams are higly unlikely to be left out of the semifinals, because of the very badly imbalanced draw.

 

To explain this, barring a huge surprise, these two teams will end up first and second in the group. Winner of the group will qualify directly in the quarterfinals, while second placed team will need to play a knockout match against the third team of group B to get their spot. This team will most likely be France and both Greece and Italy should be able to beat them. Then, in quarterfinals teams from our group, will probably meet the top two teams from group C or the top team of group C and the third team of Group D. With all respect to the teams in it, Group C is by far the weakest in this tournament. That means, it will be very surprising if Greece and Italy don't make it to the semifinals, regardless of the order they finish in their group.

 

 

[Makedonas 2,155]

We won 32-7 against Slovakia. Sorry @hckošice

[hckošice 14,843]

19 minutes ago, Makedonas said:

We won 32-7 against Slovakia. Sorry @hckošice

Did not know we play at the world champs. Amazing

[maestro 653]

Quarterfinals tomorrow and below are the matches.

 

 Greece -  Serbia 

 Netherlands -  Hungary 

 Israel -  Italy  

 Russia -  Spain 

 

Winners from the first two matches will face each other in the first semifinal, as will the other two winners in the second semifinal.

[Makedonas 2,155]

I think this is the 7th semifinal for Greek water polo national teams in 2021

 

Our men's senior team won silver at the Olympics and bronze in the World League.

 

Our men's and women's U17 teams both won silver at the European Championships.

 

Our men's U15 team won bronze at the European Championships, and our women's U15 team got 4th place at the European Championships.

[maestro 653]

Results of quarterfinal matches.

 

 Greece -  Serbia 18-5

 Netherlands -  Hungary 12-13

 Israel -  Italy 9-15 

 Russia -  Spain 5-10

 

That means Russia won't win the title for a third time in a row, as they had won the two previous editions. Spain ran a four-goal streak from 2-2 to 2-6 and controlled the game afterwards. 

 

In the other exciting quarterfinal, Hungary took the win, despite being 2-6 down at the beginning of the second quarter and Netherlands holding a 7-9 lead at halftime.

 

Semifinals are scheduled for tomorrow.

 

 Greece -  Hungary

 Italy -  Spain

 

[Makedonas 2,155]

We beat Hungary 13-8 so we are in the final now!

 

FINA is streaming this tournament on Youtube. I wanted to watch today and totally forgot about it until the last few minutes of the game, but happy that our girls won and tomorrow I will watch the final.

 

This is now the 6th medal for Greek water polo national teams in 2021. Unfortunately no gold yet, hopefully tomorrow will be the first though!

 

We last won gold at this competition in 1997, though our most recent medal was a silver in 2017.

 

 

[maestro 653]

Results of semifinal matches.

 

 Greece -  Hungary 13-8

 Italy -  Spain 12-14

 

World championship concludes tomorrow.

 

Bronze medal match will be  Hungary -  Italy and the final will be  Greece -  Spain. This will be the third final ever for Greece in this competition and the fourth for Spain. Both have won one of their previous finals.

[Makedonas 2,155]

Spain leads Greece 6-1 at halftime. Wow. We are shockingly poor today, nothing is going our way. We even had a penalty and missed that too.

 

Somehow I have a feeling we will do better in the second half but I'm not sure if it will be enough to come back from such a large deficit.