• Female The 'Water Warriors' have fun to the rhythm of Anni Espar to go to the final

It was

Filip Filipovic

, who he had to be, a man who has been leading

Serbia

all his life

, who was already chosen the best in the world 10 years ago, who found a millimeter gap between the arms of five Spaniards to score the condemnation goal (10-9). There were 26 seconds left when he scored the decisive goal, the one that broke the tie, the one that condemned

Spain

to fight for the bronze in the

Tokyo Games

next Sunday against

Hungary

(6:40 am). It could not be. After three consecutive finals, in a World Cup and in two Europeans, and after beating the Balkan team five times in a row, the team that

David Martín

coaches

he ran out of the award he was coming for.

Bronze would be a consolation, yes it would be, but now ...

Now it's time to analyze how a game that was won was lost, as Spain was winning by two (6-8) with four minutes remaining.

Until then he had done everything right, if anything he had trembled at first.

Felipe Perrone

said

that, being water polo so difficult to decipher from outside the pool, this time it would be easy to know if Spain was playing well or not. "If you see that a lot of water is moving, we are going well. If not, we are going badly," he foreshadowed. The explanation started from the comparison of the size of the Spaniards with the Serbs, bigger, stronger: if David Martín's team accepted the water polo set by his rival, very physical, stuck, even violent, he would end up defeated; his only option was to move, move, move. And they did, although it took them 10 minutes to get it and later they forgot.

In the first quarter not a drop was wagging in the Tatsumi Water Polo Center, the caps were almost dry. Perhaps due to the nerves of playing its first Olympic semifinal - nobody knew what it was - or perhaps due to a Serbian tactical surprise, Spain stopped and even wasted the three superiorities it enjoyed. Not a goal scored. Bad business. But start sometimes just start. In the first break, Martín's instruction was clear, they had to speed up, find the buoys and that's what they did: in front of the goalkeeper, Alejandro Bustos and Roger Tahull erased zero from the scoreboard and everything began to flow.

While Daniel López Pinedo maintained a very high percentage of stops (he reached 65%), the Spanish scorers, from Munarriz to Mallarach, found the first gaps and hit the mark.

From 0-2 it went to 4-2 and, from there to that 6-8 that heralded the pass to the final.

But then the calm returned to the water and, with it, the absence of so many.

Serbia, back in their sauce, came back, enjoyed themselves and, in the end, Filipovic was there to finish the match.

According to the criteria of The Trust Project

Know more

  • sports

  • Spain Olympics

  • Water polo JJOO

Tokyo Games López Pinedo leads Spain to its first water polo semi-finals since Sydney 2000

Tokyo Olympics Another milestone against pessimism: all the teams in Spain, in the quarterfinals

Tokyo Olympics Why is Spain a world power in team sports?

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