Germany 23
Malta 9
(3-4, 7-1, 5-2, 8-2)
The Malta water polo national team suffered their second defeat in the World League after going down to a superior German side in Krefeld, on Tuesday.
After a bright start to the match, which saw the visitors’ race into a four-goal lead, the Germans quickly restored order with a devastating performance in the second session, highlighted by their pacey play, to all but settled the tie in the hosts’ favour.
From then on, the Germans continued to score at regular intervals, with the young Maltese side continuing to battle to keep the score respectable.
The Maltese were off to a flier as for the majority of the opening session they played some excellent waterpolo, making the most of all the man up opportunities that came their way and defending very diligently.
In fact, Malta raced into a commanding four goal lead as they managed to score from all four man-up sets they won throughout the first session with Jeremy Abela and Ben Plumpton helping themselves to a brace each.
Towards the end of the first session, the home side started to get into the picture and they managed to pull three goals back through a Ben Reibel brace and another from Osman Moritz.
But the Germans were a completely different proposition in the second session and parity was restored early in the second session through Marko Stamm.
The Germans seemed to have stepped up their game and Lukas Kuppers put them ahead for the first time in the match with just over six minutes to the interval before Marin Reskovic put them two goals clear.
Goals from Reibel, Nils Illingers, Dennis Eidner and a Kuppers penalty gave the Germans a commanding six-goal buffer at the interval – 10-5 – with Jordan Camilleri scoring the visitors’ only goal.
The Germans all but wrapped up their victory in the third session when they found the Malta net five times, through Zoran Bozic, Dennis Strekezjij, Marin Restovic and Marko Stamm as their lighting transitions piled the damage.
Jordan Camilleri completed his hat-trick with a brace to somewhat limit the gap.
The Germans wrapped up their win in the final session when netting eight times through Dennis Deidman, Illinger, from a penalty, Lukas Kuppers, scorer of a hat-trick, Morris Ostmann and Stamm, twice, with Malta managing to find the net twice through Ben Plumpton and Jordan Camilleri.
MALTA: Nicholas Grixti, Jordan Camilleri 4, Nicholas Bugelli, Jeremy Abela 2, Andreas Galea, Darren Zammit, Jacob Sciberras, Zachary Mizzi, Jake Muscat, Miguel Zammit, Isaiah Riolo, Jake Tanti, Ben Plumpton 3.