Group B: Dinamo Tbilisi (GEO) v Olympiacos Piraeus (GRE) 6-19
Olympiacos wasted no time to decide the match – in four minutes they stormed to a 0-5 lead scoring as many action goals. Then, while killing two man-downs, they netted their first one to go 0-6 up by the end of the first period.
Though Dinamo pulled two back early in the second, the Greeks reset the six-goal gap a couple of minutes later and thanks to a double by Ioannis Fountoulis they led 3-10 at halftime.
And Olympiacos didn’t slow down for the second half, netted just one less goal (they had a 3-9 run in this half), Fountoulis and Dimitrios Nikolaidis led the charge with four goals apiece.
The Greeks’ speed was different, they hit five from counters and the level of man-down defending also differed significantly – while Olympiacos was 6 for 8 in extras, the Greeks held the hosts on 2 for 12 at the other end of the pool.
Comments from the coaches
Dejan Stanojevic, coach, Dinamo
“It is obvious that we are not on the same level with the other three teams in our group, we are not on the level of the Champions League. We really need to work on a lot of things, first of all on the mentality of our players. We received a lot of goals, many easy goals. Of course, it is very hard to play against such a great team, with two great centre-forwards, still, we need to do much better next time.”
Hrvoje Koljanin, coach, Olympiacos
“From the first moment of the game, we played well and felt really good in the water. The team is playing better and better game by game. Dinamo really tried everything, but we had a very good day. We needed this performance as we didn’t play that well in the first round.”
