Much of this thread’s discussion has been about perceived issues with the offense. I would agree that there were/are issues, but I am also wondering what folks think about the US defense. I think they gave up the most goals in the tournament. That has to be concerning to the coaching staff?
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Speaking of next year, just saw this in a World Aquatics article: Netherlands came through for a first victory to join USA, but the goal differential means Netherlands finished eighth and will be back in Division II with USA next year while Montenegro and Georgia replace them in Division I after their heroics in Malta earlier today.
Vavic was the best defender on the team in Paris. You just don’t notice his impact. Earhardt is only a thought based on years ago reputation as a scorer in college. He’s not that great of a defender. Is he playing abroad? Has he ever? I’d rather have Larsen who is bigger and can also shoot. It’s all about Hallock and everything falls into place after. And even with Ben it will take an incredible amount of luck to medal in 2028.
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I don’t subscribe to the narrative that this was all just an “experiment” because the stakes were low and the tournament was unimportant. I believe that the US thought they were going to do well. However, if we want to say that it is an experiment than the US must ask itself:
Does going 1 and 5
losing most games by double digits
and being relegated to Division 2 count as a successful experiment?
If not, then the US needs to review the methods by which they place players onto the team.
What is the real value of taking players still in college - especially considering the college game doesn’t come close to the level European leagues are offering.
What should happen is the US needs to look at players only after they had great college careers and have spent some time in Europe and take it from there. (Ryder being the one exception) I think this tournament has shown that doing well at U20 does not translate to what is expected at the senior level.
And why are we only focused on what happens every four years - shouldn’t we be trying to do well at every world cup or world championship? And let’s not forget, this very same experiment was already tried last year at the World Championships in Singapore. Does anyone really think that doing this same thing for a third year will result in anything different.
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To your comment, “What should happen is the US needs to look at players only after they had great college careers and have spent some time in Europe and take it from there.”
Curious to know who is playing in Europe now (or has played recently) that you’d tell DU to place on these teams? Here’s an incomplete list of players in Europe now. Six of the 10 were on the team in Greece. Please add any I’m missing.
Adrian Weinberg (Panathinaikos)
Jack Larsen (Sabadell)
Marco Vavic (San Giljan)
Nicolas Saveljic (TeliMar)
Hannes Daube (Apollon Smyrnis)
Max Irving (Pro Recco)
Bernardo Herzer (San Giljan)
Jackson Painter (Bologna De Akker)
Dash McFarland (Bologna De Akker)
Tyler Abramson (Bologna De Akker)
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I’m actually happy to see there are that many. Where did you find this info so quickly?
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As the National League has been coming along, US should also be looking to those players for evaluation. Not every player can go to Europe.
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Me, too. But wish there were more! I had some of the same thoughts as you expressed during the last tournament, so I did some searching while watching the games. I’d love to see someone (a sports / entertainment law firm or a sports agency) step in and start representing U.S. players looking to go to Europe. The system, as it stands, relies too much on finding personal connections and is not scalable.
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Very valid points. Many of them I agree with. The one push back I would have is on taking current college players to these tournaments. The best rosters in the world have players aged 18-22 on them at full strength (Spain, Serbia, Hungary, Croatia, etc.). The difference is that our players of that age are playing in the college system, unlike the Europeans who break into their professional men’s teams at that age or, in the case of the best players, earlier. The fact is, that system is never changing in the US. Flat out. It’s not changing for soccer, one of the most played sports in the country, so they’re not going to change it for water polo. Any sort of hope of a professional water polo league taking off in the United States is a pipe dream. The fact of the matter is, I’d say that of the 30 best current American water polo players, 10-15 (or more honestly) of them are in college at present. Look at National League, where the US Junior Team or the collegiate club teams have put beatings on men’s powerhouses like NYAC, LAAC, and Olympic Club in the last few years. So our Olympic team will always have college players on it.
The way that the soccer landscape has changed is that when the top of the top US soccer players want to make a serious run at the sport, they go to Europe as soon as they can. If you’re like Christian Pulisic and are lucky enough to have European ancestry, you can go at 16. If not, like recent Manchester City signing Cavan Sullivan, you have to wait until you’re 18 to go. But those guys make at minimum 50-60k a week to go pro in Europe right away. That’s the draw away from college. Professional water polo teams in Europe would never offer an American player enough of a financial benefit to skip college altogether and make a water polo career of it. Therefore, a crop of our best athletes every Olympic cycle will be in the collegiate pool. Just like when Anthony Davis, or longer ago Christian Laettner, make the Men’s Basketball Olympic team. I don’t have a problem with college athletes being on the team. I think it’s an inevitability of our system.
As for why we only care every four years, I’ll offer a Jeff-style point to anyone who can name the last 3 “World Cup” gold medalists without googling it. I can name every Olympic medal team back as far as you’d like, but there’s no shot I can even name one World Cup winner. Even world championships do not have the same gravitas. I played with, and later coached with a Hungarian national who played on three Hungarian World Championship teams, medaling twice. But he never capped for the Olympics, and he acted himself like the world championships were minor accomplishments (though I thought it was the coolest thing). The Olympics mean more. And for me, if we medal every Olympics and lose every game outside of it, I’m happy as a clam.
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Cupido is still playing as well actually, Italian A2 league for the past 2 seasons. I’m not too familiar with this league but happy to see him active.
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It depends what you mean by “current”, but I don’t agree at all that 15 of the best 30 US players are currently in college. I went back to 2021 and compiled this list of field players. All of the players below made All-american first or second team.
I would take basically anyone from this list below by their position, over any of the young /new players who have capped for the Nat team over the last 2 cycles. (Singapore / Greece)
The oldest of these players is now around 26-27—-putting them at 28-29 in the 2028 Olympic year. WIth many of the players currently only 23 or so, putting them at 25-26 in LA. These are their prime years.
Abramson
Avakian
Cain
Cavano
Deely
Earhardt
Gruwell
Howerton
Jensen
Painter
Parrish
Pittman
Kenney
Kranz
Leggett
McFarland
Miller
Molthen
Rhodes
Rosenfeld
Rossman
Shipman
Tierney
Q. Woodhead
Zaan
(There were also solid players at the third team and HM level)
I understand that some of these players have indeed trained with the Nat team, and I also understand that some players have decided to move on. That said, does anyone want to really say that every one of these guys just doesn’t have the potential. And how many of them were given 2-3 cycles to be part of any “experiment” in order to groom them? How is it that hardly any players have been pulled from these 5 plus years?
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Water polo is no more of a niche sport than lacrosse, which has the PLL pro league, so I tend to disagree with your belief that a water polo pro league is a pipe dream. Don’t even get me started on the American Cornhole League. But that’s a discussion for another thread.
If we are “stuck” with the current system, then how do we improve it? For example, how do we get our college players more playing opportunities between December and July? Nine of our athletes in Greece hadn’t played a competitive game since December for some and the early January friendlies against Australia for others, whereas March/April are the 8th and 9th months of the European water polo season. The NCAA limits the number of games college teams can play in the Spring to 4-5 (I think). I believe it also limits how much teams can practice in the Spring. If an estimated 65-75% of Olympians are/were NCAA varsity athletes, then why are there rules in place that limit their training and playing opportunities?
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Just to compare the size of the two sports, over 212,000 athletes played high school lacrosse in 2024-2025. Under 40,000 played water polo. So we are as niche as niche gets. Even for comparison of roster size sake, around 2000 schools offered water polo and almost 7000 had lacrosse. But I’d love the national league to get to a point where it could be an Olympic proving ground. Right now it seems more like college prep and the highest level of Masters that exists.
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I get your point and agree the numbers aren’t an apples-to-apples comparison, but I feel “niche” is defined by more than population. The more important question is what are the demographics of the population you’re trying to target? Passionate fan base, disposable income, location in large market cities, etc. Water polo checks those boxes.
I, too, want the National League to play a role in training our future Olympians, extending the playing careers of college players, and maybe becoming a launch pad for more of our young players to make the jump to Europe, ala MLS.
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The issue isn’t the size of the sport, it is the marketability of it. Lacrosse has major corporations that produce huge amounts of gear that is required to play lacrosse, and those suppliers have an interest in growing the sport to sell more of that gear.
Even your cornhole example is more marketable than water polo. They have beer sponsors etc.
Water polo doesn’t require the types of gear that a sport like lacrosse does so investment in the sport is much lower and water polo doesn’t have the “backyard” relatability that cornhole does. Both of those factors make it so that water polo isn’t desirable to any advertisers or sponsors.
That is the reason water polo isn’t a professional sport and why it doesn’t get media coverage more than any other thing.
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This is a simple maths question for me. How do you increase quality of field players ranked P1-P60 and goalkeepers G1-G10 so you always has a high quality group to draw from for any international competition? Two ways - improve domestic league or have most players in foreign leagues against top competitors. Domestic league helps players maybe P30 and lower but top players need to be strengthened skills against the best - in Europe. After NCAA players have maybe 7-8 years before they thinking about jobs, families and they play in Europe for 3 yrs every Olympics cycle. Top players are skilled enough to leave and go back but how do your P10-P30 have enough time to develop post NCAA before thinking about end of their career? In USA, it’s all about the Olympics selection rather than a career as a water polo player. It’s the difference. So we can not care about world championships but then we will lose a lot of players who only see Olympics as end goal - why are they playing if they aren’t making the team. You have to get them into the professional mindset much earlier so they see it as their profession rather than putting off the inevitable MBA job
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Good points. It is all about the Olympic prestige. I’m happy we won the bronze last Olympics but I’m not happy Dejan is still the coach. I really think the coach is a driving force in keeping players in the pipeline and I believe many players have retired prematurely not wanting to play for him. He got the medal but I’m stunned he is getting a 4th Olympics. In my opinion you need to dominate like the women did for a coach to stick around that long. Merrill Moses should have been on the team and possibly was the best goalie in 2004 but Ratko cut him. He then quit water polo after he was cut and entered the workforce. It took some luck that Ratko quit and they hired his college coach as the next coach, who then coaxed him out of retirement. He then played in the next 3 Olympics and completely changed his career trajectory to a coach. Without Terry, he likely never comes back.
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I agree with what all has been said, but would add more. I think it is worth looking at how the youth (meaning U14 through U18, are being handled here. I think we are letting USAWP off the hook a bit. While everyone may not completely agree, there is a strong sentiment amongst people that know that we have a nepotism problem with our pipeline. Look at how little turnover you have in the younger national team kids from dev to youth. Either we have incredible evaluators that understand what someone will be before puberty or maybe we have a nepotism problem. Or maybe it is laziness. Or maybe something else.
That is where this really starts and you build a deeper pool, or modify the options as kids develop, mature, grow, etc. As long as we have our current system I don’t see this changing.
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There are a lot of good points being made in this thread. Some I agree with, others I think lack a bit of nuance and context. This tournament obviously doesn’t carry the weight of the Olympics, World Championships, etc. But excusing the performance because it’s a “young team” or a “low-importance tournament” doesn’t sit well with me.
First off, most teams treated this as a developmental competition to some extent. Serbia brought a B/C squad. Italy is in a rebuild with a younger group. Hungary skewed a bit younger than usual. Spain rotated in younger players and even sat Granados in the last game. That’s just the reality across the board. What you saw across all these teams was a team identity that players plugged into to continue to make the team hum along.
On the contrary, you dig into what the US showed in Greece.
This roster had a number of guys from Paris, plus a wave of younger talent with real potential. What stood out, and I’d be surprised if others didn’t see the same, was a lack of a clear plan across the board. Front court attack, defensive tactics, man up / man down etc. This team just didn’t look prepared to compete at a high international level.
The players deserve some of that responsibility. You’d expect stronger leadership from the veterans Max, Hannes, Marko, and others and it just wasn’t consistently there.
That said, this points back to the program that Dejan runs. Look at the body of work over multiple cycles. Listen to how players describe their experiences, especially around preparation. Look at how many great players have dropped out of the competition pool due to his lack of communication or becoming frustrated with the culture. He’s been in seat for over a decade and has simply hasn not established a cohesive, lasting national identity of play, which is something every other top nation manages to do to produce top results. By the way, this does not mean medals to me. This is about passing the eye test and seeing competitive results against top teams (consistently).
Yes, there was a bronze medal. Great result and I’m super happy for those guys. Some of those guys are generational US players and it’s a pleasure to watch them play. I hope those guys come back for 28’. The disappointing part is that it helped provide the perfect story to secure another quad for Dejan (this + the CEO turnover).
At this point, the hope is that Hallock / Cupido / Hooper return, commit to a strong year of training, and give themselves a real shot in 2028. If they achieve something meaningful, it will be a testament players and their special talent not because of the program Dejan is running.
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I am guessing that several of the current college players will be taking gap years and playing in Europe for the 28 cycle.