According to waterpolo.hu, Tamás Märcz’s young charges were more than a match for Montenegro in the first three-quarters of their match yesterday but with the score at 9-9, Vladimir Gojkovic’s team scored three unanswered goals to decide the match. According to Hungarian head coach, our team has nothing to be ashamed of, while Márton Vámos says the team is just at the start of its journey.
As reported earlier, Hungary Men suffered a tight 12-9 defeat at the hands of neighbours Montenegro in the Duna Aréna on Tuesday night, and they won on Wednesday with their final group match against Japan (14-7).
“We’ve nothing to be ashamed of!”, Hungary head coach Tamás Märcz said as he started his appraisal of Tuesday’s defeat.
“Montenegro are a strong team but played well against them and were in with a chance of victory until they punished our mistakes at the end.
There were many positives in the match – we played well at the start, although I also saw mistakes which we’ll need to correct; I’m firstly thinking here of lack of belief and accuracy”.
Márton Vámos was also impressed by much of the team’s performance and says they need to play many more of these types of matches: “We went into the match as we did the first game – in every match there is much significance in which team scores the first goal and it’s important to take a symbolic lead. Even if this wasn’t proven at the end here or during the bad defeat in the Europa Cup, we did give it credence by playing well for three quarters of this water polo game. In the fourth period, their key players took the chance of victory away from us. We’re a young team and we’re at the start of our journey so we need to play as many of these types of matches as possible and sooner or later we’ll learn that we too can pull in this kind of match right at the end. Unfortunately we made the Montenegro keeper look good and I fired my last shot straight at him so he could hardly avoid it, but that is part of the game. We need to play more matches like this one so that we know how to play at the end because a contest doesn’t last only three quarters but rather four, and if it’s a draw after that then penalties can come into play, which is a mini-contest in itself”, Vámos explained.
In regard to the crowd in the Duna Aréna, Vámos was effusive in his praise:
“Whether it was the 2014 European Championship at home, last year’s World Championship on Margaret Island or the World League Super finals, the fans’ love always fills us with positivity but they don’t place any burden or pressure on us.
The crowd were fantastic and it was almost full in the Duna Aréna today. I hope just as many come out for the match tomorrow against Japan and not just for today against Montenegro”.
DUNA ARÉNA IN BUDAPEST TO HOST EVENTS BEYOND SWIMMING
Final standings:
1. Montenegro 9 pts, 2. Hungary 6, 3. Australia 3, 4. Japan 0
Source: waterpolo.hu
