Spain reigns in water polo again 21 years later

The team beat Italy on penalties to win the third World Cup in its history.

Spain was proclaimed world champion in men’s water polo, beating a black beast. With the hunger of the disappointments, of the defeats in the three great finals that had faced them, the selection of David Martin defeated Italy in a final decided on penalties (9-9, 6-5 in the decisive game) to recover in Budapest a center that had been pursued for two decades.

The stop of Ed Lorrio at the launch of Giacomo Cinnamon allowed Spain to ascend to that peak that it had been groping for in recent times. The one that has resisted since he fired the best generation in his history. The one that won three golds in a row in a prodigious five years (the 1996 Atlanta Olympics, the 1998 and 2001 World Cups). That precedent that crushes anyone who comes after.

With the core of the team that won silver in the last two European Championships (2018, 2020), with the very young Unai Aguirre (19 years old) keeping his back instead of Dani Lpez PinedoWith that stretched final by Edu Lorrio, Spain buried the evil fate against Italy (their executioner in the 1992 Barcelona Finals and the 1994 and 2019 World Cups) to once again hit the top.

black beast

With a stroke of the pen, he chased away the ghost of the last two World Cup finals lost. The most recent, in 2019 against this same rival, and the one in 2009, against Serbia but in the same fate. An agonizing duel that was doomed by a bad end to the match in which Italy, always in tow, finally hunted him down. I never got to go ahead.

Because the first minute of the game had not passed when lvaro granados he escaped behind the Italian defense in the first counterattack. It is the other main argument of this selection, the most palpable consequence of that defense against which Croatia or Montenegro have already come up against: only a wall like this allows so many opportunities to hit at a gallop.

Granados did it, and a double of Alberto Munarriz. The Navarrese, encouraged from afar, drew a happy start that soon clouded Italy. The transalpines, with two quick goals in superiority, equalized before closing the first act to remind Spain that this was a final and they, the black beast.

3-0 run

David Martn’s men responded with their best exercise of the game: a 3-0 run in the second quarter in which Aguirre and Granados shone, each hitting the right goalkeeper. Italy, with the hammer of By Fulviocould not find a way to break down the Spanish defense and the acceleration opened a three-goal gap before the break.

Spain already knew what it was like to beat the transalpines in this World Cup. He did it 14-12 in the first phase, a comeback that brought a prize: the direct pass to the quarterfinals without going through the round of 16 trap. But also the lesson that Italy, which knows how to compete to the limit, could take the match up in the second half.

And trust that he did. And that Spain, powerful in the first half, would be in the third quarter, she faltered in the final minutes. And from that stop, the umpteenth, with which Aguirre raised his finger to the sky caressing the top, Italy went to two goals, one of them the only equal one in the entire match, to send the final to penalties.

And there after the tie in the first five (4-4), the change of goalkeepers, and another success, the second, by Álvaro Granados, the hands of Edu Lorrio raised the Spanish men’s team to the top of world water polo .