Vlachos: “We didn’t deserve anything more, we are moving forward”

Thodoris Vlachos emphasized that the national men’s polo team aimed for something more at the European Championships in Zagreb, but could not get it, he stood on the “ups and downs” in the performance, he asked for some things to be corrected afterwards and in view of the World Championships in Doha next month , believes that they fought more individually and selfishly, than as a team, which will be a lesson for them in the future.

Analytically: “In the end it’s not what you want, but what you deserve and in this tournament I don’t think we deserved anything more than fifth place. In the crucial games and at the start we were indeed a different team, but the fact that we showed a much improved face in two games that the players might not have responded to means that we didn’t lose much of our qualities.

It means that in the next few days we can pick up where we left off. To correct too much, to put our ‘I’ below the team because we came here differently. And all together, united, I think that this national team will find its way”.

Asked what was to blame, he said: “I think we had too much ego when we came from the recent success, the guys coming from their teams, where they are the stars. We didn’t have time to put everything under the ‘umbrella’ of the team and operate as we always do. We worked a lot all these days with videos, with speech, you learn from defeats. Since we can’t change anything now, we can only win and continue stronger.”

Regarding the European medal, which is the only one the National Team does not have: “If we deserve it at some point, it will come. But, we have to deserve it. We have to ‘bite down hard’ to get a medal in the European Championship”.

Dinos Genidounias added: “It was not the start of the year that we wanted. We saved our good games for the end, which ultimately didn’t really matter. Certainly, it was a matter of prestige to finish fifth and not eighth or seventh, we didn’t deserve it. Even fifth place says something, that we didn’t give up, we didn’t give up.

We also have a tournament in two weeks, a global one, a very important event. So how we ended here, I think is a good start for what follows. Our goals were different, fifth place was not what we wanted. However, we’ve said it a thousand times, no one has a contract with success.

We shouldn’t lie to ourselves, we weren’t good, it wasn’t the face we showed in the previous competitions and I think at the end of the day, we got what we deserved to be realistic. But, like I said, I’m optimistic about how we finished this tournament and hopefully we can continue that in Doha at the Worlds.”

Regarding the qualification of the women’s national team to the Olympics and the bronze medal, he emphasized: “We train in the same swimming pool, we see what they are going through, how much training they do and we know how upset they were in 2016 when they were eliminated in the last phase. So, we’re happy and it’s really nice that we won’t be the only team sport in the Olympics.”