Great Britain’s senior teams take on European Qualification challenge

Great Britain’s senior water polo teams return to European Qualification action for the first time since 2014 this weekend.

GB’s men will travel to Turkey whilst the women’s team are in Portugal as both sides look to qualify for the 2024 European Championship finals in Israel in January.

To make the finals the British teams need to finish in the top two of their groups to give themselves a chance of making to Tel Aviv.

For the women a top two finish will be enough to qualify but only the best three of four second placed teams on the men’s side will make the finals in Israel – due to the tournament hosts taking the extra spot.

They will join the eight sides in each competition that have already qualified after making the quarter-finals at last year’s European Championships.

Following their success in the Danube Cup last weekend, Nick Buller’s women’s team travel to Rio Maior to compete in a tightly fought group against hosts Portugal, Finland and Germany.

They will come face to face with the Germans for the third time in two months in what is set to be another evenly-matched contest. Germany narrowly came out on top on home turf at the World Cup event in Berlin last month and also in the group phase of the Danube Cup event last weekend.

Crucially, GB got their revenge to win the Danube Cup final, 9-4, and if they can repeat that feat in Portugal they’ll be confident of booking themselves a finals spot.

Great Britain’s men have been drawn in a tough group which features three sides that regularly qualify for the European finals.

The squad contains eleven of the English side that recently took victory at the Home Nations tournament in Dublin.

They open up their campaign on Friday against Olympic Champions Serbia, who won the gold at both the Tokyo 2020 and Rio 2016 Games.

They then face hosts Turkey and Slovakia as head coach Nick Hume hopes to guide his team to success in Istanbul.

You can see the full schedule for both teams as well as a list of all the athletes and coaches heading to the tournament below. You can follow all the action on the LEN website.