Pro Recco knows how to always win: “You have to die for your teammates”

Así, así, así gana el Madrid!” sang Cristiano Ronaldo and his companions in 2018 after winning the third consecutive Champions League in a still carefree Kyiv. This is how Real Madrid wins: a team that has only the word victory imprinted in its DNA. This is how Pro Recco wins, which last Saturday lifted its third consecutive Champions League in men’s water polo. It hadn’t happened for 53 years, since the trio of Mladost of Zagreb between 1968 and 1970. For the city of focaccia it is the eleventh triumph in history: it is the club that has won the most, followed by Partizan of Belgrade and the same Mladost at seven. The season ended with the second treble (Scudetto, Coppa Italia and Champions League) in a row after the one achieved last year, the sixth ever.

In the final, little Recco (not even 10,000 inhabitants) defeated the Serbs of Novi Beograd in Belgrade, a city of over a million people. It was the revenge of the Champions League a year ago, which Pro Recco also won on penalties. This time the result was clear, 14-11, the Ligurians started with a 4-1 run and maintained a lead of three or four goals throughout the match. Yet there was an episode that could have scuttled Pro Recco. Two minutes into the second period, with the score 5-2, forward Gonzalo Echenique received a red card for brutality that left his players four minutes short. In water polo, an eternity. Instead, after the penalty converted by the hosts, Aaron Younger and Aleksandar Ivović even extended it to 7-3. “Four minutes with the man down strengthened us, they were the best of the match where we decided the final. It seems paradoxical but that’s how it is, psychologically we destroyed them at that moment,” said Ivović, a 37-year-old Montenegrin defender and Pro Recco banner.

Ivović is four years older than his coach, the Croatian Sandro Sukno, who has won all the trophies in which he has participated since he has led Pro Recco, i.e. since June 2021: two championships, two Italian Cups, two Champions Leagues and the 2022 European Super Cup. Sukno was born in 1990, he is only 32 years old, he will be 33 on the last day of the month. In 2012, at the London Olympics, he won the gold medal with Croatia by beating Italy in the final. In 2017, at the World Cup in Budapest, his hat-trick decided the final against hosts Hungary, and in Hungary water polo is considered a national sport. In the same year he was awarded as the best player in the world by Total Waterpolo magazine, effectively the Ballon d’Or of football. Sukno was 27 years old, he was the strongest water polo player on the planet and of course he played for Pro Recco. But in October 2017, during a routine visit to Milan, he was diagnosed with a heart problem. Despite an open heart operation in the USA, he was no longer granted sports eligibility.

“It wasn’t easy to suddenly say enough,” says Sukno. “It was a very difficult period, I tried in every way to get back but there were too many risks for the competitive spirit. So, after talking to my family, I decided I wanted to stay in water polo, which is my life. I started in 2019 as vice coach of the Croatian national team and I immediately fell in love. I said: I want to do this”. And she has no regrets: “I don’t think about my career as a player anymore, I’m satisfied, I won everything. I look ahead and now I enjoy coaching. For me the key to everything is the group. I always tell players that you have to die for your teammates. With individuality you can win some games, with group you win trophies. Only with a real group can you win a Champions League final despite being outnumbered for four minutes. That was a difficult situation, even physically, everyone had to give more and we succeeded. We have shown that we are a real team.” “Sandro Sukno will be with us again next year”, announces Maurizio Felugo, the president of Pro Recco. “Repeating ourselves in the Champions League was extraordinary, above all because we played fantastic water polo. Sandro confirmed that he is an exceptional coach and a special person. We will still do great things together and he will do them forever in his life.”