Junioren EM am 23. und 25. August 2013 in Deutschland
Die European Federation of American Football (EFAF) hat per Pressemitteilung mitgeteilt, dass die EFAF Junioren Europameisterschafts Endrunde am 23. und 25. August 2013 in Deutschland ausgetragen wird.
Pressemitteilung der EFAF im Original:
EJC 2013 will take place in Germany August 23 and 25, 2013
The EFAF Board of Directors has unanimously decided to accept the offer of AFVD (Germany) to host the EJC Final Tournament as a Four-Nations-Tournament in 2013 on August 23 and 25, 2013. Hosting cities to be confirmed.
Consultations on how to proceed with the preparations for the European Junior Championships (EJC), scheduled for summer 2013, between EFAF and member federations had started immediately after the Russian federation had to withdraw from hosting the competition due to the recent meteor slash in the Chelyabinsk region, which should have been the site of the EJC final tournament.
The mutual understanding of all parties involved is that a tournament in a six-team-format as originally planned, given the short time-frame left for preparation, could not be held in August 2013. Maintaining the six-team-format would mean a shift of the EJC final tournament into the year 2014. However, the EJC tournament also serves as European qualifier for the 2014 World Junior Championships. So a six-team EJC final tournament in 2014 could be possible only if IFAF was willing to shift this tournament by one year as well.
The alternative will be an EJC final tournament involving four teams in summer 2013. EFAF received proposals of the German federation AFVD for both of these alternative scenarios. Of the potential participants the national federations of France and Austria have declared their support for the proposal from Germany. The four-team-format would of course require changes in the format of the qualification rounds. In addition to Germany, Austria and France currently Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands still are in the race for a spot in the final tournament - and Russia as the original host as well.
The proposal by the AFVD addresses these problems and also the financial aspects that are associated with the change of the site of the final tournament for the participating nations. AFVD would be willing to compensate part of the expenses of teams travelling to the final tournament or to qualification games which would have to be scheduled in addition to the original schedule.
AFVD is willing to pay financial Support to each team in the final tournament.
Under the new format Austria and Germany are automatically qualified.
To determine the remaining two participants there is the need to implement quarterfinals.
The game assignment should be:
Quarterfinal A: France versus Russia (at France) Quarterfinal B: Winner Sweden versus The Netherlands versus Denmark (if Sweden wins Sweden has home right/ if The Netherlands wins Denmark has home right)
Latest time to play those games should be Wednesday before the final tournament. So in worst case the teams playing quarterfinal can use the time slot which was originally planned for the first games at Chelyabinsk.
AFVD offers travel support to the travelling teams for the quarterfinal which means there is some help for the travelling teams.