Poland vs Spain

In the last match of the day Poland took on Spain in a crucial match for the remaining qualification.

The match was even almost in all aspects until the very last minutes when Poland could score 3 consecutive goals within a minute to secure the victory with 7-3 and still be in the race for a spot in the final round.

Tomasz Gaicki in Team Poland felt that the match was even but that they had more control of the ball than Spain and that they were lucky in the end scoring those deciding goals. And doing this in front of this amazing crowd, 1189 spectators, is just fantastic.

Best players:
Jimmie Heimer, Poland
Aitor Bermejo, Spain

Ukraine vs Finland

The newcomer Ukraine was very well aware of that a lesson was to be expected when they faced Finland for the first time ever. And what a lesson they were given…

Finland played with two lines to keep up the tempo and they played on full speed from the start and scored 8 goals in the first 10 minutes.

It didn’t help that the Ukrainians worked hard the whole match and never gave in - before the match had ended team Finland had scored 38 goals. Jani Kukkola was involved in 15 of them by scoring 4 and assisting to 11.

Team Finland kept Rickie Hyvärinen, Mika Kohonen and Tero Tiitu on the bench the complete match.

On the question of how he looked upon the match from the side Tiitu said that this could be a good lesson for Ukraine. If they carefully analyze how this match was played and put in some efforts I’m convinced that they will find out how they with some adjustments could have lowered the figures considerably.

Tamuz Hidir, Head coach of team Ukraine said that the feeling going in to this match was the same as when you come to a test in school and realizes that the test was on the complete book and you had only studied one chapter but still had to struggle to get through it.  

Best players:
Artem Repalo, Ukraine
Jani Kukkola, Finland

Russia vs France

Russia and France had not before played each other but judging from the open and friendly atmosphere on the court they will most likely not mind playing each other again soon.

In the first period there was hardly any body contact whatsoever, still with quite high tempo though, and team Russia could relatively undisturbed play their way to the French goal.
The feeling was that the French players had too much respect for the Russians that on the other hand were confident of winning the match and therefore saved energy for the next match.

Russia scored 6 and France 1 goal in the period, the French goal came during a cost-to-coast phase where Jerome Andermatt scored from a narrow angle.

In the second period the tempo went down a bit and also the chances to score were less. Only one goal was scored, Igor Kuchin scored 7-1 in the middle of the period.

Two quick Russian goals early in the 3rd period pointed towards double digits but the match turned tighter and instead of a 10th Russian goal France scored their 2nd.

In the end of the match, the last 5 minutes, the heat also was turned on when France strived for a third goal to play equal in the last period but no more goals were scored, the match ended 9-2 to Russia.

Best players:
Valery Maslov, Russia
Charles-Henry Sis, France