Malta waterpolo show more fight in defeat to Hungary at Euros

The Malta waterpolo national team showed encouraging signs of recovery with a battling performance against former Olympic champions Hungary, but it was still not enough to avoid a 21-6 defeat.

As the scoreline shows, the Hungarians were clearly in a class of their own, but Milan Cirovic’s boys showed a lot of fight and an improved showing, particularly in defence, which managed to frustrate at times their more-quoted opponents.

ASA president Karl Izzo sounded pleased with the character shown by his team against Hungary.

“I am very pleased with the effort of the players against Hungary,” Izzo said.

“This was our best performance in Belgrade so far. To win 17 man-ups against a team of the calibre of Hungary is no mean feat; unfortunately, we missed a lot of these opportunities.

“But now we must focus on the last three matches where we need to win all of them to secure 13th place.”

Malta will now be in action on Friday against Israel in the first match of the positional play-offs between 13th and 16th place.

The first session was quite encouraging for the Maltese players, who showed improvement in their defensive play.

Goalkeeper Jake Tanti was in great form, pulling off four brilliant saves that denied the Hungarians time and again.

But still the Magyars still managed to find the net four times through David Tatrai, Daniel Angyal, Peter Kovacs, and Vince Varga.

Malta managed to stay quite close to their opponents as goals from Ivan Nagaev and Alec Fenech left them just two goals behind.

In the second session, the Hungarians switched to press and that made it more difficult for the Maltese players to contain their attacks.

The Hungarians found the net seven times through a brace each from Vince Vigvari, Benedek Batizi, and Akos Nagy, with the other netting coming from Vince Varga.

Malta added two more goals during the session through Liam Galea and Stevie Camilleri to change ends 11-4 behind.

Hungary’s superiority was never put in question, even in the third session as the Euro favourites continued to pileup the goals, scoring five times with the Maltese managing to bridge gap twice through Liam Galea and Matthew Zammit from an extra-man set.

The last session offered very little as the Hungarians found the net five times without reply to wrap up a comfortable 21-6 victory and seal top spot.