Courtesy: Malta Football


UEFA Futsal Championship mini-tournament gets underway this evening

The Malta national futsal team will be hosting Albania, Georgia and Greece in Group C of the UEFA Futsal Championship qualifying round between Thursday 19 and Sunday 22 at the Corradino Pavilion.

This will be the third adventure for the futsal team in a qualifying campaign for one of the major futsal competitions. In 2007, Malta made its international debut, taking part in the qualifying round of the UEFA Futsal Championship, suffering rather heavy defeats to Cyprus, Kazakhstan and Georgia. One year later, Malta hosted a qualifying round mini-tournament for the FIFA Futsal World Cup. The team made remarkable improvement losing 1-2 to both Greece and Albania before suffering a heavy defeat to tournament winners Slovenia in the third game.

This time, Malta aims at obtaining its first positive result considering that the standard of the three visiting teams is more or less the same as that of our team or slightly higher.

In view of this tournament, Malta played a number of friendly matches including two games against France and another two against a Sicilian selection.

Malta futsal coach Michal Striz, whose contract was extended till June, has a number of new players in squad, including two players who play 11-a-side football namely Rowen Muscat of Birkirkara and Randall Refalo of Pietà Hotspurs.

The players selected by Striz are:

Goalkeepers
Marvin Spiteri
Brian Baldacchino

Defenders
Robert Magro
Timothy Ellis
JeanBert Gatt
James Ciangura
Elton Catania
Paul Bugeja

Forwards
Tyron Borg
Rowen Muscat
Xavier Saliba
Darren Agius
John Cutajar
Randall Refalo

On Thursday, Malta faces Georgia, kick-off at 19:00, while on Friday, Malta takes on Albania, kick-off at 17:00. The third and final match is against Greece on Sunday at 19:00.

The other matches are Greece vs Albania on Thursday at 17:00, Georgia vs Greece on Friday at 19:00 and Albania vs Georgia on Sunday at 17:00.








Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com