ROMANIA 14
MALTA 9
(6-2, 3-3, 2-0, 3-4)
The Malta water polo national team suffered their second defeat at the World Cup Division II when they were beaten by Romania at the National Pool.
The Romanians proved the stronger side on the day but the Maltese were made to pay for a poor first-session showing, which saw them concede some sloppy goals while their finishing left much to be desired.
However, as the minutes passed, the Maltese started to show signs of improvement and managed to keep down the deficit.
But the damage had already been done, as the Romanians picked up the win to push the Malta national team outside the top ten positions ahead of the positional play-offs.
Ivan Nagaev was Malta’s leading scorer with five goals.
Malta struggled to get going in the opening session, as Romania looked by far the sharper side as they raced into a commanding 6-2 lead.
Vlad-Luca Giorgescu and Andrei Prioteasa helped themselves to a well-taken brace, with the other goals coming from Matei Lutescu and David Belenyesi.
Malta’s only goals came through a fine back-hand finish from Jeremy Abela and Darren Zammit, whose quick reflexes enabled him to push the ball into the net.
But that was the only positive of a session where the team looked too slow when passing the ball and lacked defensive discipline in key moments.
In the second session, the Maltese players showed a lot of fight as despite conceding two early goals, they tried to fight back, and Ivan Nagaev came to the fore with a fine hat-trick to bridge the gap to 9-5.
However, in the third session, the Romanians tamed the Maltese fightback from Georgescu and Iudean stretched their advantage to 11-5 with one session to go.
Goals from Nagaev and Darren Zammit at the start of the final session bridged the gap to just five goals – 12-7.
Although the match was all but settled, the Maltese players kept pushing and goals from Elijah Schembri and Ivan Nagaev made it a final 14-9 scoreline.
MALTA: N. Grixti, E. Schembri 1, J. Valletta, R. Caruana, J. Cachia, B. Cachia, I. Nagaev 5, J. Abela 1, J. Zerafa Gregory, D. Zammit 2, L. Dimech, Z. Dzanovic, S. Engerer.