EuroFloorball Challenge Day 1

The first edition of the new EuroFloorball Challenge started today in Budapest, Hungary with eight teams, four in women’s group and four in men’s group. The winner of the challenge, both in men’s and women’s group will eventually qualify for the EuroFloorball Cup 2017. Important games ahead for four days and on Sunday we will know who the winners are.

Lyon FBC from France and CDE El Valle from Spain started the women’s tournament. The first period of the game was very careful playing and teams kept on moving the ball in the neutral zones without even trying to score nor to shoot.

No goals scored in the first period and finally at 24:59 Clara Vallejo Terrazza was able to score the first goal for the Spanish and only few minutes later her team mate Maria Alonso Lopez-Zuazo scored another one. Caroline Ballet from Lyon kept her team in the game by scoring the first one for her team, but after that El Valle took the control and took an easy 8-2 victory against the French.

The first men’s game was the battle between local Dunai Krokodilok and Italian FBC Bozen. In all IFF club tournaments, such as Champions Cup, EFC and EFChallenge all the regular games are three points games. So the winner gets three points and if the match ends with a draw there will be no overtime, direct penalty shootout will decide the winner and the winner in this case gets two points and the loser one point.

The game stayed really close for the whole 60 minutes even though Krodilok took a 2-0 lead in the middle of second period. Bozen didn’t give in and scored two quick goals to equalize to 2-2 only few minutes later and when the Italians scored the 3-3 goal at 46.56 it looked like both teams just started to wait for the penalty shots. Five shots for both teams were enough and Krokodilok left the field as a winner with 4-3.

Phoenix Fireballs, the reigning Hungarian Champion had a flash start in the third game of the day, when they played against IFK Paris. By the beginning of the second period the Hungarians were already leading 4-0 and were controlling the game. Paris also had their moments and situations, but the Hungarian goalkeeper didn’t have much troubles saving the French shots. 6-0 after two periods and the third period was more or less just playing around and Phoenix took a 7-0 victory.

The last game of the first day in women’s tournament was the local game between the Neumann Pillangok and Phoenix Fireball. Pillangok won the Hungarian championship last spring and Phoenix took the bronze. Both teams are also from Budapest and that also increased the excitement for the game.

From the first moments of the game it was quite clear that the game will be quite even. Both teams having the will to win of course. Pillangok then being the first team to score at 5.35, but Fireball quite soon found the way to score. Pillangok was able to control the game in the second period, but the big question mark would be how they would keep up the speed with only seven field players in this game.

Fireball were able to take the initiative in the end of the second period, but didn’t succeed to score in that period, but in the very beginning of the third period they succeeded and the score was 4-3 for Pillangok. Fireball wasn´t able to push it any further and Pillangok slowly turned the match in their favor and ended the game with 7-4 victory.