2010–11 LEN Women's Champions' Cup

The 2010–11 LEN Women's Champions' Cup was the 24th edition of the highest-level competition in women's European club water polo. It involded the champions and other top teams from European national leagues and ran from December 2010 to April 2011. The Final Four (semifinals, final, and third place game) took place in Sabadell, Spain.

Final Four host CN Sabadell became the first Spanish team to win the competition beating Orizzonte Catania in the final.^[1] Olympiacos CFP and Kinef Kirishi also reached the Final Four, with Olympiacos ranking third, while defending champion Vouliagmeni OC was defeated by Orizzonte in the quarter-finals.

Federation team allocation

Each national federation can enter up to two teams into the Women's Champions' Cup.

• Seeded Federations are the federations who placed a team in the Final Four of the previous' year's competition. In 2009/10, these countries were: Greece (2), Italy, and Russia
• All other federations are unseeded

Federations do not have to enter their top two teams into the Champions' Cup. If they do not think their clubs can be competitive, they can enter teams into the second-tier LEN Cup.

Format and Changes

The original format for the Champions' Cup was to have four phases:

• A qualification round of 4 groups of any size played as a Round-robin tournament at the site of a host team
• A preliminary round of 4 groups of 4 played as a Round-robin tournament at the site of a host team
• A quarterfinal round played as a Two-legged tie
• The Final Four played as a Knockout tournament at a pre-selected site

However, there were only 13 entries, so the qualification round was cancelled, and the preliminary round will be played with 3 groups of 3 and 1 group of 4.

Distribution

Teams

There were 13 entries from 7 countries. Each of the draw pots were organised according to the previous year's results:
Bold indicates countries that entered teams

Note: The Netherlands only entered one team, so the two available places in Pot 3 were taken by a second German team and a French team elevated from Pot 4.

Draw	Group A	Group B	Group C	Group D
Pot 1	Orizzonte Catania	Kinef Kirishi	Olympiacos CFP	Vouliagmeni OC
Pot 2	CN Sabadell	CE Mediterrani	Shturm Ruza	Fiorentina WP
Pot 3	Blau-Weiss Bochum	Bayer Uerdingen	Olympic Nice	Polar Bears Ede
Pot 4				ASPTT Nancy

Round and Draw Dates

Tournament Phase

First Qualifying Round

Group A

	Team	PL	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1.	Sabadell	2	2	0	0	26	20	6
2.	Orizzonte Catania (host)	2	1	0	1	30	25	3
3.	Blau-Weiss Bochum	2	0	0	2	18	29	0

Group B

	Team	PL	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1.	Kinef Kirishi (host)	2	2	0	0	42	16	6
2.	Bayer Uerdingen	2	1	0	1	30	33	0
3.	Mediterrani	2	0	0	2	17	40	0

Group C

	Team	PL	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1.	Olympiacos	2	2	0	0	25	15	6
2.	Shturm Ruza	2	1	0	1	26	19	3
3.	Olympic Nice (host)	2	0	0	2	11	28	0

Group D

	Team	PL	W	D	L	F	A	Pts
1.	Vouliagmeni	3	3	0	0	43	17	9
2.	Polar Bears Ede	3	2	0	1	31	30	6
3.	Fiorentina (host)	3	1	0	2	24	28	3
4.	Nancy	3	0	0	3	19	42	0

Quarter-finals

Team #1	Agg.	Team #2	L #1	L #2
Sabadell	22–19	Shturm Ruza	16–8	6–11
Polar Bears Ede	18–26	Kinef Kirishi	9–11	9–15
Vouliagmeni	21–23	Orizzonte Catania	13–11	8–12
Bayer Uerdingen	14–35	Olympiacos	8–18	6–17

Final Four

• Piscina Can Llong, Sabadell

	Semi-finals				Final
	22 April
	Sabadell	15
	Kinef Kirishi	13
					23 April
					Sabadell	13
					Orizzonte Catania	8
					Third place
	22 April			23 April
	Orizzonte Catania	14		Kinef Kirishi	12
	Olympiacos	13			Olympiacos	14

References