Beach Soccer takes a new step forward in Estonia

by Gabino Renales, BSWW Deputy vice-president

The XVIIth edition of the European Beach Soccer League just dropped the curtain, and the remaining sensations cannot be more positive.  The core event of beach soccer in the Old Continent has just confirmed how the sport is growing. And it is growing because the people involved in it are getting bigger, and their joint force grows to overcome the difficulties more easily, and to bring on a game with more quality, more intensity and more balanced every day. 

Beach Soccer has again proven to be a sport made for almost anywhere in the world. It is not a sport designed only for mild climate countries. Have you ever wondered how many top-flight beach soccer events have been played above the 5oth parallel north? With this last Euro Beach Soccer League Superfinal and Promotion Final in Pärnu, beach soccer enjoyed a wonderful event in a wonderful venue, with an amazing atmosphere, close to the 59^th parallel north, in which stands as one of its most septentrional showdowns lately, together with the Euro Beach Soccer League stages held in Stavanger (Norway), even slightly northerner, or other northern venues such as Sopot (Poland), Moscow (Russia) or the Beach Soccer Worldwide Tour in Malmoe (Sweden). Beach Soccer can be played anywhere!!

Another symptom of how beach soccer is growing is how balanced matches have become. The times in which one team just smashed another are long gone. The evenness in the games is amazingly increasing, and this final stage of the European League has clearly showcased that. Facts speak for themselves:    

Out of 32 games, 11 were decided at extra times or after penalty kick shootout, and 7 were decided by only one goal difference.  These have made for an amazingly thrilling competition, with the teams fighting, on equal forces and until the very last second, for the victory. This is the highest form of honouring the sport, and, again, the proof of how the professionals in this sport are working tirelessly to make themselves, and beach soccer, better every day. 

This last season has reconfirmed Europe as one of the beach soccer epicentres in the globe, not only with the new World Champion again coming from the Old Continent, but also for the solidness of the European Season, and the level shown by the teams.