Rita Kesteli loved life in Spain. Last summer, the captain of our women’s water polo team changed Hungarian pools at Mataró’s invitation, saying goodbye to UVSE after eight years, seven league titles and a string of cup victories. In May after a successful first season Contract extension With the Spanish club, and to continue his goal is to crush the only mummy, Sabadell, who snatched gold from Mataro’s nose in the League and Premier League finals.
“I like being here, I feel good.” Overall, we played well, and we haven’t lost against another team, Sabadell, this season. In that regard, we were unlucky that they also reached the Champions League final. I hope they will be our only real rivals this year, of course it will also depend on us – told our newspaper Rita Kesteli, who, despite interesting experiences, has not yet decided whether or not to stay with the Spanish team in La Liga. long-term. “I don’t know yet what the future will hold.” I haven’t signed with any club in over a year.
In any case, the Hungarian player is optimistic about Mataro’s future. – I see we got stronger in the summer, Laura Arts is still with us and the arrival of a new world champion goalkeeper is a big positive. I hope this year we will be among the best in the Champions League, maybe we can surpass last year’s performance.
I really want to win the Champions League, and it would be nice to win the Spanish League or the Spanish Cup, but it would be difficult.
Kesthele: The coaching staff is not the only one responsible
Keszthelyi had lacrimal duct surgery in the summer which forced him to rest. But before that, he had a busy summer, visiting Fukuoka with the national team, but the World Cup in Japan didn’t quite go as expected.
– Compared to the previous year, the silver of the World Championships, this was not what we expected from ourselves, so the sixth place was disappointing. Already during the preparatory matches and in the spring, in the World League, we scored a lot of goals in every game, and we couldn’t improve on that in the summer either. I think that’s why we lost. Because of the new rules, more goals are being scored and it seems we haven’t found the solution how our game can work better. The other teams were ahead of us in this. In addition, there was a lack of good individual performances, which we could have performed at a higher level as a team.
The sixth place achieved in the World Cup went to the captain of the national team, Attila Peru, who left his post last week after being appointed in 2015. According to Kesteli, the coaching staff is not the only one responsible.
“I am so sorry for the sake of our coaching staff, because we worked so much together,” he said. – It may not always have seemed to the outside world that our work yielded results, but between 2017 and 2021 we built a new team with which we won the Olympic bronze medal, which is a huge success and forever links us to the coaching staff. If we don’t finish sixth in the World Cup, or if we play better, it might not work out that way. In any case, the team is also responsible for what happened.
With less than a year to go until the start of the Olympic Games, the Hungarian national team has yet to get its quota. And he will have the opportunity to do this in the next two tournaments, the winner of the European Championship 2024 in Israel, and after a month the two finalists of the World Cup in Qatar will qualify for the Paris Games. Needless to say, this is what a team leader wants.
We want to finish far ahead of the sixth place we achieved in the World Cup. In the first two global competitions, the European Championship and the World Championship, the most important goal will be to get a share in the Paris Olympics. We won’t have much time to get used to the new manager, so it could go either way. But no matter who the coach is, there has to be an expectation of ourselves that – one way or another – we will get the quotas – concluded Kestele.
Attila Piero: RedesignI currently live in Budapest, but my family members moved back to Eger. Let me put it this way, I’m in a phase of re-planning, that’s why I’m currently in the capital, but I don’t know yet what fate it will bring – Judge Attila Biro stated in the case To answerShe added that, in her opinion, the women’s national team should have no problem completing the qualifiers in Paris, because she would leave an entire team to her successor. |
Cover photo: Rita Kestele at the World Championships in Fukuoka (Photo: MTI/Szilárd Koszticsák)
