2020 LEN Champions League Water Polo
- Qualifying: November 11-15, 2020
- Preliminary Round 1: December 14-18, 2020
- Preliminary Round 2: March 1-5, 2021
- Preliminary Round 3: April 19-23, 2021
- Final 8: June 3-5, 2021
- Match results
Format
The LEN Champions League is a high-level European water polo competition. The league has been running since 1963, though the 2020 season was canceled amid the coronavirus pandemic.
The 2020-2021 season breaks up qualifying (November 2020) and the first round of group play (December 2020) in the year 2020, before continuing with the second round of group play (March 2021) and third round of group play (April 2021) in the spring. The season will conclude with the final 8 matching up in early June of 2021.
With the COVID-19 pandemic still ongoing, the league will run each round of its matches in a bubble setting. Group A features six teams and Group B six more teams. They’ll play sets of matches on consecutive days within their groups, with the top four in each group across the preliminary rounds advancing to the final 8 tournament.
Group A
In Rome, Group A competed for a second day, with Olympiacos and Pro Recco both winning their second matches.
The 2019 league runners-up, Olympiacos knocked off Spandau 04 Berlin 13-9. The offense was much more effective for Olympiacos today than in yesterday’s defensive struggle, a 6-4 win over CC Ortigia. Stylianos Argyropoulos scored three times for Olympiacos.
And Pro Recco, which finished third overall in 2019, won 10-7 over Ortigia to keep pace with Olympiacos in the group. Pro Recco got three scores from Dusan Mandic, who has carried a heavy scoring load so far with six goals in two matches.
In the third match, Jug Adriatic Osig. beat CN Marseille in an 11-10 thriller. That keeps Jug tied with Pro Recco and Olympiacos at the top of the grouping two matches in. Tomorrow will be the biggest test for Jug, which is matched up with Olympiacos.
Group B
In Group B, FTC Telekom Budapest won an 11-2 blowout over Jadran Herceg Novi. With the Group B matches taking place in Budapest, the Hungarian-based FTC Telekom got three goals from Nicolas Constantin-Bicari, and goalkeeping duo Andras Gardonyi and Soma Vogel each only had to save three of four shots against them to cap a suffocating win.
Zodiac CNAB blew out Waspo98 Hanover 16-8 on a whopping six goals from Alberto Munarriz Egana. An Brescia beat Dinamo Tbilisi 15-9, with Angelos Vlachopoulos scoring five times on six shots.
Tomorrow, An Brescia and FTC Telekom will meet in a showdown of 1-0 teams this round.