Gergely Kiss, one of the best Hungarian water polo players of all time, joined our team for the European Championships in Budapest.
Kiss, the triple Olympic champion (2000, 2004, 2008), who won seven medals at the European Championships (2 golds, 1 silver, 4 bronze), shares his thoughts about the tournament in Budapest.
I am very excited to see the best teams’ performance in Budapest half a year before Tokyo 2020!
Hungary will host an excellent event, as usual, thanks to the fruitful cooperation of LEN, the Hungarian Federation, and the Hungarian Sport Agency. Three hundred media representatives, thousands of fans and millions in front of their TV screens will follow the top teams. I am happy that more countries are involved at a high level, and there are improvements in their performance.
Hungarian teams, women, and men will fight for gold and the Olympic qualification. Both have some world star players and quite complete squads. I expect them to play quick and very energetic water polo. Also, it will be interesting to see how the new rules will work at this high level. Hopefully, they will help the fans to enjoy more our beautiful sport.
I think that both competitions have their best 6-7 teams fighting for the medals. In men, Serbia and, I hope as a Hungarian, Hungary seem to have the most complete teams but also Italy, Spain, Croatia, Greece and Montenegro can beat everyone and have strong teams.
In women’s competition, the top teams are also very close to each other. The same team can be a finalist or even finish in 7th place.
Gergely Kiss
