Group B: Pro Recco (ITA) v WPC Dinamo Tbilisi (GEO) 15-6
The schedule offered Recco an easy start in the competition and the title-holders used that opportunity to entertain their fans, especially in the first half as they reached double digits in two quarters.
Dinamo put up a good fight at the beginning but conceded three in a row after 2-2 and Recco repeated the 5-2 run in the second to lead 10-4 at halftime. There were a couple of spectacular goals, especially their new Greek centre-forward Konstantin Kakaris showed some classy moves, his third goal was something from the old school, a magnificent tipping.
Recco slowed down somewhat for the second half, and netted only five after the big break, two of those came in the last minute – still, the young fans were overjoyed to watch the Italian giant doing a clean job.
How the coaches saw it:
Sandro Sukno, coach, Recco
“I’m satisfied with the result, though the quality of our performance wasn’t on the highest level. That is normal now, we are still at the start of the season. We keep on preparing for our next match which is a really important one, in Dubrovnik.”
Dejan Stanojevic, coach, Dinamo
“During the game, you have the emotions but at the end, after calming down, you need to see the difference between the teams, the level of the individual quality, Recco has a fantastic team with eleven similarly great players. Of course, we will analyse our mistakes, I think we lost many scoring chances by bad passing, but it is not easy to play against a team like Recco. In this group, against three amazing teams, we cannot dream of much success, all we have to do is to try better and better in every match.”
