Argentina took their seventh trophy at Pan American Championships end of June 2018 at Greenland – and mainly their coach made history: After Jordi Ribera (Spain), Valero Rivera (Qatar) and Toni Gerona (Tunisia), Manuel Cadenas steered the “Gladiators” to the gold medals – therefore all four current continental champions are coached by Spaniards. Cadenas had taken over the team from Eduardo Gallardo, who was the mastermind behind the successes since 2010, and who had formed a team, which started their global story at the 2011 World Championship in Sweden, where they beat the hosts in the main round. Already in 2010, 2012 and 2014, they beat Brazil in the continental finals, but later in 2016, they lost the semi on home ground against Brazil to finish on the third position. Now Argentina are part of their twelfth World Championship in a row – and their best result still is the twelfth position from 2011 (and 2015). The team includes the three Simonet brothers Sebastian, Pablo and Diego. The latter did not only become the first ever Argentine player to win the Champions League in May 2018 with Montpellier, but even was awarded MVP of the FINAL4.

COMPETITION RECORDS: World championship match results: 10997: 22, 1999: 21, 2001: 15, 2003: 17, 2005: 18, 2007: 16, 2009: 18, 2011: 12, 2013:18, 2015: 12, 2017: 18

Olympic Games match results: 2012: 10, 2016: 10

Pan American Championship match results: 1979: 5, 1981: 4, 1985: 5, 1994: 4, 1996: SILVER, 1998: SILVER, 2000: GOLD, 2002: GOLD, 2004: GOLD, 2006: SILVER, 2008: SILVER, 2010: GOLD, 2012: GOLD, 2014: GOLD, 2016: BRONZE, 2018: GOLD

Qualification for Denmark/Germany 2019: Pan American Champions