Serbia, Greece, USA, Italy win at FINA men's water polo world league super final

Defending champion Serbia, Greece, Italy and USA met no troubles to claim their first group match victories on the first day of the FINA Water Polo World League Super Final here on Tuesday.

Milan Aleksic snatched the first extra man goal for Serbia after 34 seconds of the game and the defending champion led all the way but never threw off Brazil by big margin since both teams played good defense.

"It was a very tough game for us because we just arrived here at 8:30 pm last night and played today's first game at 3pm. My players were very tired from the beginning of the game. We won the game because we were in better mentality, " said Dejan Savic, head coach of Serbia.

Since China did not qualify for the Rio Olympic Games and entered the Super Final as hosts, China sent local Guangdong team to compete in this event. In front of the full-house home fans, Chen Jinghao shot the first goal in 45 seconds. United States took the control of the whole game by earning 3 extra man goals out of 5 while China wasted all 8 exclusion fouls. USA captain Tony Azevedo and Josh Samuels both had 4 goals.

"USA are a much better team than we are. Our plan was to make a good defense and that worked out. Our young players showed their bests and tried to shoot the balls. Our goal is try to improve from each game and help our young players be more experienced," said Chen Yaohua, head coach of China.

In other group matches, Italy trounced Australia 14-7 and Greece romped Japan 15-7.

A total of eight teams, including Australia, Brazil, China, Greece, Italy, Japan, Serbia and the USA qualified for the six-day Super Final, which followed the six-round European preliminaries and the Intercontinental Tournament in Yokohama, Japan during May 10-15. Endit