NETHERLANDS 13 GREECE 7 

Match heroes
Captain Sabrina van der Sloot and Simone van der Kraats scored three each for the victors while 17-year-old Lola Moolhuijzen netted twice — the ninth and 11th goals. For Greece, Eleftheria Plevritou, who has 10 international medals to her name, snared a double either side of the first break and a third with a lob from the top in the last minute. Maria Myriokefalitaki, who plays for Olympiakos alongside Plevritou, scored off a rebound and a cross pass. Dutch goalkeeper Laura Aarts (below) was named player of the match.

Turning point
At 1-1, Netherlands shot out to 4-1 with van der Kraats claiming her second from her natural left-hand-catch position. Greece kept the match close at 4-3, 5-4 and 7-5 down before Netherlands kept the Greeks scoreless for more than 13 minutes as it increased the margin to seven at 12-5. Greece kept working hard on attack to no avail.

Bottom line
Netherlands was probably at full strength, playing in front of a near-capacity crowd and produced some sublime water polo. Greece maintained its rhythm, but getting the ball inside was elusive and converting extra-man attack non-existent. It relied on the outside shots with nothing coming from the deep wings. Netherlands scored five goals on extra-man attack to Greece’s none and sent in two penalty goals, showing the obvious difference in the teams. Each match is a learning curve and the bigger matches are yet to come, so the benefits are there, especially for the younger players. It’s interesting to note that the two coaches are Greek and were brought up in the same environment in Greece.

What they said

Evangelos Doudesis (NED) — Head Coach
“It was a very good game against very good opposition. For us, these games are very important because we can gather our team together for the second time since the Olympics (period) to identify our needs and to define our vision for the tournaments of the coming summer and for the next years, of course.” On the big margin today: “To be honest, the Greek team missed some players today. They didn’t arrive complete to play that game. They faced some difficulties related to Covid and some injuries in the last days. We too, of course, but we expect this can happen in the games. We built it up, the difference, at the end of the second period and beginning of the third period and we maintained it until the end of the game.”

Alexia Kammenou (GRE) — Head Coach
“We had a very difficult week. We are missing some very important, very experienced players. We came with 12 players. Unfortunately, we couldn’t make it more because of big health problems and didn’t let us bring the team we wanted. It was a good chance for the young girls to play in this competition against such a strong team. We lost our concentration in the beginning of the second quarter and that’s obvious. We couldn’t manage to be more relaxed on offence. From the other side, I was satisfied with it, knowing the trouble of the past week. We have a lot of time in front of us, as Netherlands is the same, to try new things. We’re building a new team with young girls and we have always to receive something from a bad result. We will review the game, work on it and hopefully we will be better in coming games.”