Footvolley welcome to America. America welcome Footvolley!
The 2009 Pro Footvolley Tour in Hollywood, FL was the world's largest and most spectacular professional footvolley event to date, period. In what appeared to be a disappointing cold, windy, and rainy weekend turned into bright and warm South Florida sunshine on Sunday. When the weather warmed up, the action on the sand heated up big time! Over 15,000 people watched footvolley in the centre stadium over the two days of action (Saturday rained out).
Tournament Structure:
The tournament was structured with group play followed by straight elimination matches. There were a total of 34 teams in the event. Basically, the group winners would then wait a match to face winners from the match between the 2nd vs. 3rd ranked teams from a group-crossing.
The top 20 US Footvolley Athletes competed with a slew of international stars as well. All top seeds won their respective groups with the exception of Group G where the Pensacola/Rio de Janeiro team Tico/Nico squad took 1st place. In the group stages, a few squads looked like early favorites: Nildo/Alan, Sergio/Igor, and Dudu/Miguel all looked very strong. The most level group was G where all matches were extremely tight. The best looking European squad clearly was the Corsican-based duo of Yannick Achard and Anthony Alessandri from Group B.
Moving on to Quarters:
In the Quarters, Baiano/Claudinho, an pre-tournament favorite, met up with Alemao/Miguel. The 2008 National Champs beat the 2008 National Champ (Adriano) and moved onto the semi-finals. This would be the first tournament in a few years that Adriano did not pair up with his long-time partner Junior. Both are from Deerfield Beach, FL. Junior, who went to Brazil in search of a better partner in Para, came up short himself versus a resilient Nick Cardoso and Victor Martins. Nico and Tico had to go to three sets to beat Jr. Para for the second time in the tournament truly earning themselves a semi-final bid. Para is considered one of Brazil's top players.
The tournament MVP would be found in Group A. Alan Cavalcanti, better known for his Beach Soccer skills on the Portuguese National team basically took his partner Nildo Shubert (Miami, FL) for a joy-ride all the way to the Championship Match.
Sergio Menezes (US Footvolley Team Captain) once again partnered up with the tournament's most exciting player in Igor Martins (Goias, Brazil). They took on Francis Farberoff (US Footvolley teammate) and Higor Matos "Guigui"(Rio de Janeiro, Brazil) and basically kept their momentum with a convincing win against a very strong squad. Before this match, was the best quarterfinal match, which had a French versus Portuguese rivalry in full display. The Corsicans were humiliated 15x1 in the first set. They then came back to win the second set and force a deciding set, in which, Alan showed his superiority in pulling Shubert with him to victory. The Corsicans never flinched and showed that they will be a force in the Hollywood event for years to come.
Semifinal and Final:
Eduardo Ribeiro and Miguel Habib play with a very traditional footvolley style. Not a lot of flair; but a ton of skill and consistency. The two rarely make mistakes on the sand. That consistency took them through to the final and the 1st place trophy. Nico/Tico are all offense and because of the geographical distance of the partners showed they lacked defensive cohesion. That cost dearly and proved to be the theme for the losers in the final matches.
Igor/Sergio and Nildo/Alan also did not have the cohesion of a local squad yet they both advanced and faced each other in the other semi-final. Shubert (a one-time Brazilian U-20 national team player) outplayed Menezes; while between the superstars Igor and Alan, the Portuguese superstar outshined the Brazilian in the decisive semi-final.
In the Championship Match, the on-going lack of defensive became apparent as Alan tried to over-defend covering partial areas of responsibility which belonged to Nildo. This played into the hands of the Ribeiro/Habib strategy as they attacked this weakness and came away winners. Whereas most teams exited the tournament with a somewhat roller-coaster ride (playing very well then dropping play) the Champions remained steady and didn't dip emotionally or technically and proved that discipline beats raw athleticism and style.
International Squads:
Last year, there was one Dutch squad who basically came to escape the March cold in Northern Europe. This year, the international teams came to take home the prize. The Corsicans nearly did!
"We are like Cariocas, our island is a relaxed environment perfect for training footvolley and enjoying life" - Yannick Achard.
"We are from Spain, we go out and we compete on the pitch. There is just great nightlife in Hollywood and South Florida. But we'll be back next year" - Edu Bakaro (Spain Soccer-Volley)
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