Highlights from European World League Round 3: wins for Serbia, Croatia, Germany and Montenegro

Italy 6 – Montenegro 8
(0-0, 1-2, 2-1, 3-5)

In Trieste, Montenegro managed the first victory away of this World League so far, by defeating Italy 8-6. The first three periods were very balanced, with no goals in the first quarter, a 2-1 advantage for Montenegro in the second and also a 2-1 score for Italy in the third period.Tied at 3-3 before the decisive quarter, Mladan Janovic (MNE) rapidly scored for the 4-3 (28 seconds), a goal that was followed by the successful attempt of Valentino Gallo 50 seconds later. Fiorentini did the 5-4 for Italy, but a prompt reaction by Montenegro (Ivovic and Radovic) led to a 6-5 score for the visiting team. Aicardi does the 6-6 with 2:41 to go, but is immediately followed by a goal of Milan Janovic. The Balkan team secured the 7-6 advantage until the last moments of the game, when Ivovic closes the score at 8-6 (four seconds to go).
This was the second win for Montenegro in this World League, after an easy victory against Romania (13-7). The team of Montenegro is automatically qualified for the Super Final, as it is the organising country – this competition will be held from June 16-21, 2009 in Podgorica. For Italy, this defeat comes after a comfortable triumph over Romania (10-2) in its first game.The next matches of the third round of the preliminaries for the European teams will be held on March 10, 2009 with Greece receiving Serbia, Spain travelling to Croatia and Russia playing with Germany in Moscow.

Italy: Stefano Tempesti, Niccolo Figari, Alex Giorgetti (1), Federico Mistrangelo, Valentino Gallo (1), Maurizio Felugo (1), Andrea Mangiante, Valerio Rizzo, Michele La Penna, Matteo Aicardi (2), Luigi Di Costanzo, Goran Fiorentini (1), Pacide Saccoia

Montenegro: Zdravko Radic, Drasko Brguljan, Vjekoslav Paskovic, Nikola Vukcevic (1), Milan Janovic (1), Milan Ticic, Mladjan Janovic (1), Damjan Danilovic, Aleksandar Ivovic (3), Aleksandar Radovic (2), Vladimir Gojkovic, Predrag Jokic, Milos Scepanovic


Greece 6 – Serbia 11
(2-3, 3-2, 0-3, 1-3)

Six hundred people were in attendance at this match in Piraeus (GRE), which was described by Greek coach Anastasios Doumpas using the following words: “The final score was not representative of our play. It does not present the real picture of the game. We did not play so badly and we were good in the first half. In the second half we were not tired, but we made some mistakes on man-up, which means we need more training.”

The Greek team captain Argyris Theodoropoulos, who scored twice, made the following comments: “For three periods we were in the game. Serbia is a very good team and most of the players are teammates, so they know each other well. I am very optimistic for this [the Greek] team, but we need time and work.”

Greece: Stelios Protonotarios, Manolis Mylonakis, Ioannis Foudoulis, Nikitas Kochilas, Evaggelos Delakas, Argyris Theodoropoulos (captain)(2), Christos Afroudakis(1), Georgios Doskas(2), Christodoulos Kolombos(1), Dimitrios Miteloudis, Panagiotis Papadogkonas, Manthos Voulgarakis, Kostas Flegkas
Coach: Anastasios Doumpas

Serbia: Slobodan Soro, Marko Avramovic, Zivko Gocic, Vanja Udovicic (captain)(3), Slavko Gak, Dusko Pijetlovic(1), Slobodan Nikic(1), Milan Aleksic, Nikola Radjen, Filip Filipovic(2), Andrija Prlainovic(4), Stefan Mitrovic, Branislav Mitrovic
Coach: Dejan Udovicic

Russia 7 – Germany 10
(3-1, 1-3, 2-3, 1-3)

This was a close match, with Russia starting strong and holding a 3-1 lead after the first quarter, but ultimately the home team proved unable to fend-off an increasingly strong German side that was buoyed by a great performance by Marko Stamm (four goals). In the second period, Gietz, Oeler and Schlotterbeck evened the score by putting in one each, while Russia netted just one goal from Dmitriy Antipov. The third period was in Germany’s favour again, but the game could still have gone either way if Russia could manage to step it up in the final period. But this was not to be, as Russia’s single fourth quarter point from Konstantin Stepanuk was no match for the three decisive goals powered in by Stamm (GER).

Russia: Viktor Ivanov, Pavel Katkov, Vitaly Urchik, A. Ryzhov-Alenichev(1), Uriy Zheltovskiy, Dmitriy Antipov(1), Evgeniy Finaev, Iliya Yablonovskiy, Konstantin Stepanuk(2), Viktor Vishnyakov(3), Sergey Lisunov, Aleksey Agarkov, Semen DavitashviliCoach: V. Sobchenko, A. Ogorodnikov

Germany: Tim-Ole Fischer, Florian Naroska, Erik Bukowski, Julian Real(1), Marko Stamm(4), Marc Politze(1), Tobias Gietz(1), Ingo Pickert, Tobias Kreuzmann, Moritz Oeler(1), Andreas Schlotterbeck(2), Paul Schuuler, Roger Kong

The next World League games in the European groups will be held on March 31 (GER vs. ESP), April 14 (RUS vs. CRO) in Moscow, April 15: (ROU vs. ITA) in Oradea, and April 29 (FRA vs. SRB) in Aix-en-Provence.Four teams from Europe will advance to the Super Final, which will be held in Podgorica (MNE) from June 16-21. The host team of Montenegro automatically advances.