Podještědský sportovní areál in Český Dub (Liberec district) hosted for the fourth time a popular minifootball tournament. Compared to the previous years, Luděk Zelenka, a former professional football player, who is behind the creation of the tournament, prepared a few new innovations for this year. For example, there was debut appearance for the Czech Republic and Slovak national minifootball teams. In addition, a separate group of regional association’s selections who are under the AMF (Association of minifootball in the Czech Republic). Into the tournament entered teams of Prague (PSMF and PKFL), Blansko, Milovice, Most, Příbram, Jihlava and Brno. Also leadership of AMF and Czech national team was present to the tournament, because it´s taken as a nomination for the newly formed national team that will travel on the European Championship in Israel and later on to the World Championship to the USA.
Czech national team squad met the day before the tournament to undergo initial training. The basis of team consisted of players who participated in last year’s European Championship in Greece: Jan Vrátil (Most), Petr Šmeral (Pardubice), Robin Demeter (Jihlava), Dominik Sedlář (Ostrava), Jaromír Grim, Michal Drábek and Rudolf Čampa (Brno). The team was supplemented by new faces from the May training camp, where management of the Czech representations took Petr Víšek and Karel Kristen from Prague, Tomáš Prokeš, Jan Koudelka and Lukáš Zrzavý from Brno.
Fights for promotion started in each group on a total of thirteen pitches, not only the squads from Český Dub, but also in Bohumileč, Osečná, Rozstání, Hodkovice nad Mohelkou and Bílá. From the total number of 66 registered teams, 64 found their way to the groups.
These Group matches were primarily about preparation for the knockout round. The Czech Republic national team narrowly lost his first game 2:1, the second tied 2:2, but all the other won with ease. In the knockout stage they competed first with the team FC Azurit, a game that they won 5:0 to advance the next round, where was waiting team FK Legalizace. Czech minifootball representation demonstrated responsible performance and knocked out their young opponents, winning 3:0. In the quarter finals they were left to face unknown Pauls Team 2008. Despite a number of chances the match finally ended without goals in a penalty shootout. When Grim and Demeter failed their tries, Czech national team crashed out of the tournament.
As in miniEURO in Greece against Germany, penalty kicks were their downfall and despite the fact that they were definitely better team, didn´t pass the quarter finals. Members of the Czech national team management however were not too downhearted, since before the European Championships it was vital that they are faced with the best that domestic minifootball offers and to expose the shortcomings and weaknesses of the game. In addition, management closely monitored the performance of other teams, in particular the selection of regional associations and collect talents that will appeal to the final nomination camp before miniEURO in Israel.
More about the tournament can be found at: www.zelencup.cz and www.malyfotbal.cz