Classic Serbian-Hungarian fencing in men's water polo tournaments. They are only fighting each other for medals overall, not for fifth place. However, this was the case at the World Water Championships in Doha. In our case, this is particularly painful, as they arrived in Qatar as defending champions and lost their quarter-final match to France by four goals. The Serbs achieved their main World Cup goal of making the top eight and securing an Olympic quota, and everything else could have been a repeat. But they have not finished on the podium in the most important competitions since the gold medal in Tokyo, so it was not a huge surprise that they lost the quarter-finals to the Croatians 15-13.
Judging by the opening minutes, Thursday's match promised to be rich with goals, with almost every attack initially ending in a goal. On the other hand, when the Serbian team was leading 3-2, the Hungarian team stopped.
It seems that the Hungarian team fired gunpowder with this. After the round, our team had many opportunities to take the lead for the first time in the match after 1-0, but we wasted the opportunities. The Serbs scored twice, with Zalanki's late goal putting us ahead 9-8.
The neighbors increased the difference to three in the last quarter, and they were able to control two of them by the end of the match. In our last attack, Vogel scored the equalizing goal, but his colleague blocked the Hungarian goalkeeper's shot, so the Serbs won 11-10.
In Saturday's qualifiers, the Serbs will clash with the Greeks for fifth place, and the Hungarians will face Montenegro for seventh place – just as they did in 2022, in a World Cup on home soil.
The defense was flawed
According to Mark Bagnai, the Hungarian players have not yet been able to overcome the shock caused by the defeat to the French.
The chaotic match against the Frenchman remained in our minds. People will not forget it. But the Serbs were just like us after losing in the quarter-finals, and might have picked themselves up sooner. It didn't go well for us, I'm sorry – the 24-year-old goalkeeper told M4 Sport.
He saw that the Hungarian defense did not represent a big task for the Serbs.
He added: “The defense was weak, and that was probably the biggest problem.” We scored a lot of goals that they didn't have to work hard to achieve. We tried to win the opposition, and then we had to finish the attacks at the last second.
Bathroom, men's gymnastics, fifth-eighth. For location:
Serbia-Hungary 11-10 (5-2, 2-5, 2-1, 2-2)
Hungarian scorers: Zalanky 3, Varga 2, Kovacs, Nagy, Nemet, Jancic, Vijvari 1-1.
Cover photo: Szilard Jancic tries (Photo: MTI/Tamás Kovács)
