{"id":269884,"date":"2025-07-17T17:33:10","date_gmt":"2025-07-17T17:33:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269884\/"},"modified":"2025-07-17T17:33:10","modified_gmt":"2025-07-17T17:33:10","slug":"japan-routs-great-britain-italy-squeaks-through-womens-crossover","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/269884\/","title":{"rendered":"Japan Routs Great Britain, Italy Squeaks Through Women\u2019s Crossover"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><strong>World Championships: Japan Routs Great Britain, Italy Squeaks Through Women\u2019s Water Polo Crossover<\/strong><\/p>\n<p>Japan made the quarterfinals of the World Aquatics Championships for the first time, and Italy just squeaked by China Thursday in the women\u2019s water polo tournament in Singapore.<\/p>\n<p>Japan was the lone third-place team to win in the crossover matches, the last chance to reach the quarters, with a 23-10 win over Great Britain. The other matches when to second-place sides, but not always easily. Italy got the biggest scare, a 13-11 win over China. The Netherlands handled New Zealand, 14-9, while Greece is in the quarters for the 12th straight edition of the tournament via a 23-9 romp past France.<\/p>\n<p>Japan scored 11 times in the first half and never looked back. <strong>Shoka Fukuda<\/strong> and <strong>Eruna Ura<\/strong> each paired three goals with four assists. <strong>Maho Kobayashi<\/strong> had four and two. <strong>Kako Kawaguchi, Ai Sunabe<\/strong> and <strong>Fuka Nishiyama<\/strong> each tallied hat tricks for Japan, which shot 66 percent (23-for-35).<\/p>\n<p>\u201cThis is a big, big success for Japan,\u201d Sunabe said. \u201cIt\u2019s the first time we\u2019re in the top eight of the world championships and it\u2019s a really good experience for us.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Japan books a quarterfinal date with the U.S. on Saturday. The eight-time World Champion qualified directly winning Group B.<\/p>\n<p>Italy never trailed but could never unlatch itself from China in a game that was just 11-10 with six minutes left. Seven steals as a team and nine saves from <strong>Aurora Condorelli<\/strong> helped Italy survive the scare.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Dafne Bettini<\/strong> led the offense with three goals and four assists. <strong>Roberta Bianconi<\/strong> scored three goals (albeit on eight shots), and <strong>Chiara Ranalli<\/strong> paired two goals on two shots with two assists. Italy gets a date with Hungary in the quarterfinals.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Siya Yan<\/strong> led China with two goals and two assists, <strong>Shiyun Wang<\/strong> scored twice and <strong>Yineng Shen<\/strong> made eight saves.<\/p>\n<p>The Dutch eased past New Zealand thanks to five goals and two assists from <strong>Simone van de Kraats. Maartje Keuning<\/strong> (two goals) was the only other Dutch player with multiple goals. <strong>Millie Quin<\/strong> had a hat trick for the Kiwis.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Foteini Tricha<\/strong> was 5-for-5 shooting to move into the tournament lead with 20 goals and pace Greece. <strong>Eleftheria Plevritou<\/strong> scored four times, and <strong>Vasiliki Plevritou<\/strong> added three goals. Greece\u2019s defense limited France\u2019s <strong>Ema Vernoux<\/strong> to 1-for-7 shooting.<\/p>\n<p>The Netherlands plays Spain in Saturday\u2019s quarterfinal, a rematch of the 2023 gold-medal match, won by the Dutch. That\u2019s the nightcap. Australia and Greece play in the first game of the day.<\/p>\n<p>Crossover round losers head to the 9-12 placement round.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"World Championships: Japan Routs Great Britain, Italy Squeaks Through Women\u2019s Water Polo Crossover Japan made the quarterfinals of&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":269885,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5018,3,4],"tags":[102537,102538,102539,102540,748,102541,393,102542,102543,4884,102544,102545,1144,102546,712,102547,102548,102549,16,15,1764,102550],"class_list":{"0":"post-269884","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-britain","8":"category-uk","9":"category-united-kingdom","10":"tag-2025-world-aquatics-championships","11":"tag-2025-world-championships","12":"tag-ai-sunabe","13":"tag-aurora-condorelli","14":"tag-britain","15":"tag-dafne-bettini","16":"tag-england","17":"tag-eruna-ura","18":"tag-foteini-tricha","19":"tag-great-britain","20":"tag-haruka-inabe","21":"tag-maartje-kuening","22":"tag-northern-ireland","23":"tag-roberta-bianconi","24":"tag-scotland","25":"tag-shoka-fukuda","26":"tag-simone-van-de-kraats","27":"tag-siya-yan","28":"tag-uk","29":"tag-united-kingdom","30":"tag-wales","31":"tag-womens-water-polo"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114869777899631401","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269884","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=269884"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/269884\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/269885"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=269884"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=269884"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=269884"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}