The goal of the research was to define experts opinion about adequate criteria for water polo players’ actual quality
evaluation and to determine experts opinion about weight coefficients (ponders) of the here defined criteria across the
playing positions in the game of water polo. Based upon the expertise performed by ten water polo professionals, the relative
importance coefficients with regard to playing positions in the game were determined for twenty seven performance
evaluation criteria. High degreee of interobserves’ agreement was obtained regarding all positions (from 0.93 to 0.96). In
concordance with the obtained results the particular playing positions were explicitly described, as well as the similarities
and the differences between them were determined from the aspect of the single criteria importance. The research results
could be usefully applied by the water polo practitioners for the selection and follow-up of players during training
programme implementation, and for programming, controll and evaluation of transformational effects
