Euro Beach Soccer League – Marseille ready to start

Second stage of Euro Beach Soccer league is ready to kick off today, Friday 25^th July in Marseille, France. After successful inaugural event in Moscow (Russia), the League comes back to the host city of the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup 2008. Marseille is today one of the only three cities worldwide (together with Rio de Janeiro and Dubai) having fruitfully organized the most important beach soccer tournament.

Russian national team is still leading the League after the three victories in three matches at their home event, but will not participate in the stage of the League. This is time for 2009 European ranking leaders Spain, Eric Cantona’s boys and 2010 Euro Beach Soccer Cup runners-up Portugal to kick-off their Euro League participation, to join Poland, who will desperately look for their first points.

Division B participants of this stage will be Belarus, Hungary and England, battling for one unique berth for the Euro Beach Soccer League Superfinal in Portugal.

All beach soccer fans will be able to see all matches of the event live, according to the below schedule (CET), through www.beachsoccer.com.

European Beach Soccer League

As it was already done last year, the League is divided in two divisions: Division A (whose participants play in 2 of the 4 events of European League Regular Phase), which includes top 8 teams in Europe, and division B, with the ones ranked from 9th on.

Four of Division A teams are participating in this event in Marseille: france, Spain, Portugal and Poland. They will all play against each other in a Round Robin format, two matches a day during three days. Each winning team will get 3 points for the League (2 if the win is in overtime or penalty shootout) and 0 if they are defeated. The team with more points will win the event in Marseille but, the team with more points after the 4 events of the League will automatically qualify to the Superfinal in Portugal (26-29 August). Only 6 of the 8 teams of Division A will make it through to the Superfinal, while 8th team will need to battle against Division B winners to maintain his category.

In Division B, the winner of each tournament plus the best second team will qualify to the Superfinal (each team participates in just one event of the Regular Phase), and only the winner in Portugal will have the honor to raise category in the 2011 League and became a Division A team, as Romania did last year.

Euro Beach Soccer League calendar:

Euro Beach Soccer League stage 1 – Moscow, Russia: May 28-30

Euro Beach Soccer League stage 2 – Marseille, France: June 25-27

Euro Beach Soccer League stage 3 – Lignano, Italy: July 2-4

Euro Beach Soccer League stage 4 – Castellon, Spain: July 30-August 1

Euro Beach Soccer League Superfinal – Portugal: August 26-29