Men’s Euro Cup: Trieste visit CN Barcelona in a crucial qualification match

On Thursday, November 20th, in the fourth match of the Men’s Euro Cup group stage (Group B), Pallanuoto Trieste will visit CN Barcelona. The game will take place at the Catalan club’s “Nova de l’Escullera” pool, starting at 8:00 PM. The referees will be Julien Borges (France) and Ante Bura (Croatia). The match will be streamed live on European Aquatics TV, and real-time play-by-play updates will be provided by Microplustiming.

The team sponsored by Samer & Co. Shipping approaches the halfway point of the Group Stage in good shape, despite the toll taken by their league defeat in Savona. Vuk Draskovic is ready to return after missing Sunday’s match in Liguria; his shooting skills will no doubt be very useful in such a delicate clash in terms of qualification for the round of 16. Trieste currently shares first place in Group B with Szolnok and Barcelona at 6 points. With Dinamo Bucharest still stuck at zero, it seems likely that the “alabardati,” the Hungarians, and the Spaniards will battle for the two spots in the next round. “We’re ready,” explains coach Maurizio Mirarchi. “We’re facing a complicated challenge, in a tough venue, against a team that is at our same level, as the group standings show. The stakes are particularly high; we’ll need a performance with great focus, and we’ll have to be perfect.”

Defeated on October 16th by Pallanuoto Trieste at the “Bruno Bianchi” pool (20–16), CN Barcelona, coached by Andrei Iosep, immediately shifted gears in the Euro Cup, stringing together two straight wins: a clear 22–11 home victory over Dinamo Bucharest and a 14–10 “blitz” in the very heated atmosphere of Szolnok’s pool. The Spaniards have plenty of offensive weapons: above all the Dutchman Mart Van Der Weijden, scorer of 10 goals in Europe, the Japanese player Taiyo Watanabe, and the talented 2001-born attacker Pol Prat, who scored a hat-trick against Trieste in the head-to-head match last month.