PORTO - Two southern European billiard players, who certainly do not belong to the top of European three-cushion, played the most remarkable roles in the European Team Cup that concluded last Sunday afternoon and in which FC Porto was crowned winner. 62-year-old Rui Manuel Costa was the star in the final for FC Porto, playing against the Turkish top team FBN Tekstil. But over the whole European Cup event, the performance of 38-year-old Spaniard Sergio Jimenez was outstanding. He played for Paiporta, won seven matches in a row in the preliminaries and the final rounds, beating world star players like Dick Jaspers, Eddy Merckx, Tayfun Tasdemir and Jean Paul de Bruijn.
Sergio Jimenez, an unmarried amateur player from Vilanova del Valles, a small town near Barcelona at ten kilometres from the beach, reached the four-team finals with Paiporta (Jimenez, Yeste, Canto, Unguetti, Ortiz), where the Spaniards were beaten by the Turks of Tekstil, but where Jimenez was the only winner against Tasdemir (40-34 in 28). Before that, he also won his matches against Dick Jaspers 40-29 in 18 and beat Eddy Merckx 40-38 in 20 innings. ''This is an incredible week for me and for the team'', he commented after the European Cup event, expressing his happiness about what Jimenez had shown. ''I am a modest player, but this motivates me a lot to continue training and trying to improve myself.'' And on his distinctive style of play and stroke technic he says: ''It has always been my style, I have never played another way then when I was a little boy.''
Sergio Jimenez, a six-time runner-up in the Spanish Championship and three-time Spanish champion with his team, should like to seek a foreign adventure. ''I would like to play for a team abroad to develop myself.'' Sergio Jimenez is not thinking about an adventure in the PBA like many of his Spanish billiard friends. ''I want to be close to my family and friends, going to South Korea would be very difficult for me, so many days away from home.''
With his unbeaten race, the Spaniard is in the company of Dani Sánchez, the FC Porto player who didn't have to play any preliminary rounds and won three matches in the final group, one in the semi-final and one in the final against Murat Naci Coklu. Dani Sánchez was among the best players in average: 1.754. Sergio Jimenez played in his four matches before the final phase a fraction higher: 1.758. The highest moyenne in the phase after the preliminaries came from the Belgian Roland Forthomme, who averaged 2.101 over his three matches with Andernos. Eddy Merckx (SIS Schoonmaak) finished with a 2.000 average in the final group.
Dani Sánchez and Gökhan Salman scored 10 match points out of five matches. The Turk Salman also remained unbeaten in the final group, but lost a match against the rather unknown Austrian Pierre Alain Rech in the preliminaries.
The players with the best averages in the final rounds of the European Cup were:
1 Roland Forthomme 2,101 (out of 4)
2 Eddy Merckx 2.000 (from 3)
3 Murat Naci Coklu 1.910 (out 5)
4 Dick Jaspers 1.825 (out 5)
5 Gökhan Salman 1.801 (out 5)
6 Dani Sánchez 1.754 (out 5)
7 Tayfun Tasdemir 1.672 (out 5)
8 Lütfi Cenet 1.571 (out 5)
9 Johan Loncelle 1.560 (from 3)
10 Gwendal Maréchal 1.428 (from 4)
The further averages (and match points) of the eight teams for the final group:
11 Joao Ferreira 8-1,404
12 Rui Manuel Costa 6-1,304
13 Jose Maria Mas 4-1.357
14 Adrian Legazpi 4-1,333
15 Jerome Barbeillon 4-1,313
16 Francis Connesson 4-1,178
17 Antonio Ortiz 4-1,120
18 Francisco Unguetti 4-1,007
19 Xavier Yeste 2-1,426
20 Raymund Swertz 2-1,383
21 Ruben Legazpi 2-1,338
22 Alfonso Legazpi 2-1,095
23 Lars Dunch 2-1,063
24 Michael Lohse 2-1,054
25 Kévin Perrotin 2-0,967
26 Dion Nelin 0-1,288
27 Peter Ceulemans 0-1.192
28 Raimond Burgman 0-1.187
29 Jacob Haack Sörensen 0-1.160
30 Jean van Erp 0-1.029
32 Nathan Duriez 0-0.750
Rui Costa directed FC Porto to the European victory in the final part