Asimaki quits Greek national team
The captain of the Greek women’s national water polo team, Alexandra Asimaki, announced that she will no longer be competing for the national team due to a dispute with the head coach.
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Asimaki released this news in a post on Instagram.
“The greatest honor for an athlete is to be a member of their national team. Let alone to have the blessing and the responsibility to be their captain. A responsibility which I never feared because for me, the team and our targets came first.
For this team, I gave everything physically and spiritually at every personal cost. The national team was and is my big love. The team with which I have conquered the top of the world on both a team and individual level, the team which I have dedicated my entire life and athletic career to. After the events that took place this summer at the World Championships in Korea, I made the difficult decision after 15 years of uninterrupted presence in our national teams to leave.
Certainly there are reasons that led me to this decision, which I will speak about at another time. I will always be close to the national team, a faithful soldier, first in battle as always all these years, but not under the same technical leadership that led us through the summer. Good luck to my teammates.”
In this statement, she was referring to national team head coach Giorgos Morfesis. According to various sources, the two had a strained relationship despite having achieved incredible things together with the national team. They won the World Championships in 2011, were silver medalists at the European Championships on three occasions (2010, 2012 and 2018), bronze medalists in the FINA World League (2010 and 2012), and won the inaugural Europa Cup in 2018. However, they finished eighth at this year’s World Championships, which was Greece’s worst placing in that event since 2007.
Greece will now look to qualify for the 2020 Olympics without their experienced captain. The absence of 31-year-old Asimaki, who was named World Water Polo Female Player of the Year in 2011, will be a huge loss for the team. It should be noted that Asimaki has been a member of the senior national team since the age of 16, and at age 17 was a part of the team that won the 2005 FINA World League title.
