Malta waterpolo women’s national team face tough opener against Germany in Euro qualifiers

The Malta women’s waterpolo national team will open their commitments in the European Championship qualifiers when they face Germany in Hanover on Friday.

For the women’s selection this tournament will be an all-mighty challenge, facing Germany and Turkey, two teams who competed in the last continental finals.

Women’s national team coach Aurelien Cousin admitted that his team faced a very tough task but said that this is a four-year project aimed at building a team that can challenge for a qualifying spot in four years’ time.

“It’s a difficult group where we are facing two teams who finished 11th and 14th in the last continental finals,” Cousin said.

“This qualification tournament is an opportunity to give our girls much-needed experience. The goal is to reach the European Championship in four years. We have a very young team, with an average age of 20 years, who will be playing a lot of matches this year.

“I am confident that with this group of players we will be able to make this step in four years’ time. Now, the goal is to try and close the gap with those teams, but to do that, we need all the players will give their maximum.

“The men’s team took a long time before reaching the European Championship finals, but now they are qualifying each time, and hopefully we follow this path.”

Caroline Schiavone, Director for Women’s Waterpolo, said that the ASA has set up a strategic path aimed at investing heavily in the women’s team to try and increase the popularity of the sport among youngsters.

“We have a very ambitious project on our hands that goes beyond the European Championships qualification tournament,” she said.

“Our goal is to see the number of women playing waterpolo in Malta increase, and to this end, we are visiting schools and clubs to try and persuade them to start practising our sport. It’s not easy, but we are very ambitious that we can continue to build this young team for the future.”