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The Italian Under-20 team finished third at the European Championships, held in Varna, Bulgaria. The Azzurri took the third place thanks to their penalty shootout victory in the hard-fought final against Montenegro.
The continental bronze medal rewards the Italian team for their solid performance and the sacrifices made during the preparation period. The trip to Bulgaria, however, wasn't all smooth sailing; it also offered numerous insights for future work.
The coach and players deserve applause for their excellent response after the resounding defeat in the semifinals. The second match of the tournament against Croatia, which ended with a resounding 19-11 victory for the Barakuda, provided a lesson in waterpolo and planning from the Balkans.
The Croatians, unsurprisingly, closed out the summer with titles in the Under-16, Under-18, and Under-20 categories, demonstrating their meticulous work in developing their young players. The Under-20s certainly benefited from their experience at the World Cup Final Eight in Sydney, a competition that, including the preparation period, allowed them to achieve significant individual and team improvement.
The Under-18s, for their part, displayed outstanding individual performances, especially in shooting quality: this appears to represent the ideal path for a quality generational changeover capable of successfully covering at least two Olympic cycles.
From this perspective, Italy appears to be clearly behind. The semifinal against the Croatians, the most pressured match, showed a clear difference in terms of attacking threat in man-up phase and against the zone difence, individual skill in the defensive zone, and even delays in the man-down.
Of the squad that played in Bulgaria, only Izzo was called up for the Mediterranean Games. If the 2006/2007/2008 class is meant to represent the post-Los Angeles era, the legitimate question is when the future will begin to be built. Only by playing high-level matches allows young players to gain the experience  to prepare them for a permanent role in the first team. 2027 will be a year packed with important events, with the Olympic qualification, and ,at the moment, it seems difficult to find a concrete place for our  top young player.
Spain and Montenegro have added Under-20 players to their first team.: players like Biel Gomila and Montenegro's Gojikovic are already permanent members of the national first team. Why haven't Italy capitalized on the World Cup Final Eight and the upcoming Mediterranean Games as opportunities to allow young players to compete at a high level and improve rapidly? Players of the calibre of Velotto, Fondelli, Di Fulvio and Presciutti, for example, competed in the Olympic Games at just over twenty years of age.

 

Credit: European Aquatics