European Universities Sports Association (EUSA) and Organizing Committee of the European Universities Futsal Championship 2011 have reached an agreement last week for the final competition format in Men’s and Women’s Championship.

Men’s Championship will be organized in eight groups of three teams in each group. Winners of the group will advance straight to the Best 16 round and earn a rest day. Teams placed second and third in their group have to play an extra playoff round in order to play in the Best 16 round.

Jussi Kuusela, President of the OC, tells that there were different systems considered: Because the number of teams increased from 16 to 24 it gave us many different possibilities to arrange Men’s Championship. With the technical delegate of the EUC Futsal 2011, Mr. Patrik Perosa, we looked for various systems and considered each of them with their strengths and weaknesses. The chosen system is fair for the teams as group winners are awarded generously with a rest day. In addition if some team is in a “death group” they still can survive by winning cup-games. We will have lots of important games as there are so many playoff-games which is always exciting. Also one great advantage is that the timetable will be more flexible. I believe teams, public and media will like this.

Women’s Championship will be played in four groups that have three teams in each group. Kuusela tells that a system is a little bit different than Men’s one: Women start the same way as men in the group phase but as they have less teams than Men, their competition will last one day less. Group winners and runner-up's will meet in the quarter-finals. That means that after the group phase, eight teams from 12 will continue the battle to be the champion and the rest four will play for the places 9-12.

More information about EUC Futsal 2011 can be found at www.eucfutsal2011.com, www.facebook.com/eucfutsal2011 and twitter.com/eucfutsal2011.