On this second last day of competition, for some teams their event came to an end with their final game and their qualification hopes over, while others were playing matches that would decide whether they were still in with a chance to qualify or not.
The tough times for Great Britain continued this morning when they faced one of the top teams and final round contender, Slovenia. The Slovenians overpowered the British defence right from the start and were ruthless in their scoring, only letting up the attacking pressure late in the final period. Despite the growing scoreline the Great Britain players kept trying their best and as hard as it is to be on the end of a big score (27-2), there are always things to be learnt from it and on the positive side, they managed to make a couple of goals of their own. Slovenia have their toughest and most important match tomorrow when they face Hungary – the winner gets a spot in Sweden. Simple.
Austria against Belgium was a game that changed control from period to period. Austria completely dominated the opening part of the match, running out to a 4-0 lead after just 7 minutes. The Belgian goalkeeper was having a nightmare start to the match but he battled on and things started to go his way. The Belgian defence closed their gaps and their attack started to work a little better. The second period was more in Belgium´s favour and they were the ones who were now pressuring to score, but the Austrian defence worked well and it was only in short-handed situations that they allowed goals to be scored. On the score sheet, Belgium won both the second & third period, but the damage had been done in the first, and Austria held on to win 6-5 and will finish 3rd in Group A. Belgium will play Great Britain tomorrow for 4th place in the group.
Another close game followed, with France v Spain, but the tempo and intensity of this game was far above that of the earlier match. France played brilliantly yesterday against the highest-ranked team in their group, but fell just short of getting any points from the match. Today, Spain had to win to keep their chances of qualifying open, so this was a tough contest. Spain got a great start with an early goal but that was all that happened on the scoreboard in the first period, especially with Mael Fanjou playing really well in the French goal. The game might not have been full of textbook tactics or techniques but it was very exciting for the spectators. Both teams were very evenly matches but the French were finding it a little more difficult to create scoring opportunities and when they did, Alvaro Santiago Vega who came into the Spanish net only for the last period, stopped all but one shot. The French were frustrated and it caused them to give away some cheap penalties which cost them, especially in the closing minutes of the game when they were pushing to score an equalising goal. Spain got the points with a 4-3 result, and they have now done all they can. Their qualification hopes now lie with Netherlands who they will be cheering on to beat Estonia in the final group match. In this scenario, all three teams would finish on 6 points and Spain could qualify with a better goal difference.
Friday night in Celano saw a really good crowd in for the home team´s match against Estonia, and Italy got off to a flying start, surprising the Estonians to lead 2-0. After the second goal, Estonia made a quick reply, just as they did after Italy scored their third in the period. Estonia have played a couple of games where they either get behind early on or can´t quite break away from their opponents as they probably would be expected to, but in the end they always seem to do enough to end up on the winning side of the final score. In this match, half the game was over before they seemed to find their spark and were able to quiet the enthusiastic local crowd support. Ten goals in the second half of the match showed their dominance to win 12-5, but the Italians played at a much higher level in this match than in any of their previous ones and will be hoping to take that good form into their final game against France, which looks like it will be great match to finish the tournament with.
For all of the match results & statistics visit the IFF Event page. All of the matches are being streamed live and replays of the games can be watched on IFF YouTube Channel 1 and photos can be viewed on IFF Flickr.
