U21 MEN
The top 12 for the men’s U21 at the ICF canoe polo world championships have been decided, with Great Britain, Germany and Italy all progressing to the next round undefeated.
Among the teams to miss out are Netherlands, who finished 8th in 2018, and Ireland, who will now fight it out to fill positions 13 to 18.
Great Britain is chasing a third consecutive U21 men’s title, but will face a strong challenge from a German team looking to win the crown for the first time since 2010.
German captain Julius Helm said he feels his team can win, despite a surprise result in a lead-up tournament.
“We’re feeling really good, its fun to play here,” Helm said.
“In the ECA Cup we finished fifth, but we are still confident we can in here. It’s time, and this is my last year in the U21’s so it is time for it.
“The team is good enough, we are a good mix of older guys and younger players, so I’m very confident.”
The tightest qualifying group featured host nation France alongside Switzerland, Poland and Czech Republic. The Czechs were the team to miss out, with the French team finishing third after losing 5-2 to Poland in front of a capacity crowd.
“To win 5-2, last time we had a draw, so we are getting better and better,” Polish captain Juliusz Bulira said after the win.
“The crowd motivated us, I have never seen anything like this. Now we’ll move to the next group and see how we go tomorrow. We are here to win a medal.”
Spain lost to Italy 3-1 on the opening day but posted wins against New Zealand and South Africa on Wednesday to book their place in the top 12. Captain Pablo Garcia Puig believes his team is coming good at the right time.
“We know we have good individual players, so we just have to do our best,” he said.
“Our game yesterday was very tough, we know Italy is a very strong team, and we knew anything could happen there. Unlucky we lost, but mentally we were able to recover well because we only had one match, so we were ready for this game.
“Yesterday’s loss was a little difficult for us, but we keep improving.”
Chinese Taipei are already guaranteed a better result than the previous world championships in 2018, when they finished 14th. After indifferent form on Tuesday the team knew they had to beat Argentina to guarantee progress to the next round.
“We felt a lot of pressure from yesterday, when we had a draw against Belgium and a loss against Great Britain, so we knew that this one was a game we had to win,” Chan said.
“Obviously we are still making mistakes, but it is getting better and better through the matches. We would like to finish top six.”
Portugal and Belgium, who both missed the 2018 world championships, are now guaranteed a top 12 finish.
