The European Championship of the cadets will be starting in Brno and Trnava in less than a week. The former eight teams Czech, France, Italy, Germany, the Netherlands, Austria, Russia and Slovakia, which got nominated to the tournament, will not be complete. The current situation with C-19 will not allow Russia, the 5th team of 2019, to take part in the European Championship. So the tournament will only have seven participants. Czech, France and Germany will play in the group A in Brno. The group B that plays in Trnava, stays as planned and consists of Italy, the Netherlands, Austria and the home team of Slovakia.
"Every little change in the tournament schedule brings uncertainty and lots of work. The absence of Russia is caused by the country being placed on the black list of countries which was the end of all hopes. We even tried the individual permission to entry form NSA but we were not successful," says Petr Ditrich, the head of CBA.
CBA and the technical department of the CEB both rescheduled the tournament (here) so that there would only be minor changes to the previously planned games and the teams didn't have to change their preparation routines. All the games of the Czech team will take place at the City Baseball Stadium (MBS) at 7pm.
"The tournament is here and we are very much looking forward to it. We are very happy that the teams of the A group are practising in Brno already. We are preparing lost of innovations, so book up your evenings for some great youth baseball." invites Petr Ditrich all the fans.
The Championship starts in Trnava at 4pm on Wednesday 21st of July with the game between Italy and Slovakia. In Brno, the games start the same day at 7pm with the initial game between Germany and France.
The games for the final standings will take place in Brno at MBS as well as at Hroši Brno stadium. Also the Baseball Exhibition will take place at the MBS before the semifinal games on Saturday. Part of the programme is the openning ceremony, award giving, Extraleague game between Draci Brno and Eagles Praha and the very popular Homerun derby. The programme will be happening at both Brno stadiums.
The first two teams of each group go into the semifinals, the teams on the other positions will play for the final standings. Germany is defending gold medal, Italy is defending silver and the Netherlands bronze. Both Czech and France have the ambitoin to nominate for the World Champoinship but they would have to finish at the first or the second place. An advancement of Slovakia or Austria would be a big surprise.