VIERSEN - The two biggest crowd-favorits at the World three cushion championships for nation teams are out of the tournament. The German home land has been eliminated and the Netherlands also had to leave the World stage after the penultimate rounds on Friday evening. Four countries have already qualified for the knockouts with the best eight teams, two more rounds will be completed right after noon on Saturday. The qualified countries for the eight-team knockouts in Viersen so far are Sweden, Belgium, Japan and France. Other contenders who can join them are Vietnam, Turkey or Spain in one group and South Korea, Colombia, Greece or USA in the final group.
Group A with defending champion Turkey, Vietnam, Spain and Argentina is the group of death. Of the three title contenders Vietnam, Turkey and Spain, two will go on after the final group matches. It will be looking forward to the clash between Turkey and Vietnam, Spain is playing against Argentina. The Vietnamese and Turks have 3 match points out of 2, Spain has 2 match points. The matches are Saturday afternoon at 1.30pm.
Group B plays first at 11am with South Korea against Greece and Colombia against USA.
The Dutch team without Dick Jaspers as its leader and the Germans without Martin Horn were unable to survive the preliminary rounds. The French did that as group winners in C, the Swedes with the royal couple Torbjörn Blomdahl and Michael Nilsson finished just ahead of the Belgians with Eddy Merckx and Jef Philipoom in match points.
The Swedish team only played a draw against Germany when Blomdahl lost to Lindemann 40-38 in 22. Michael Nilsson remained unbeaten with wins over Jef Philipoom, Amir Ibraimov and Egyptian Kamal. The Swedish number 2, in a great form, shone with a run of 14 against Kamal. Quyet Chien Tran did the same earlier in the rounds.
Belgian Jef Philipoom topped the preliminary rounds on Friday with a run of 12. Eddy Merckx surely shone for the Belgians in his match against Torbjörn Blomdahl, in which he levelled with 5-1-6 in his last three innings.
The Japanese had a superb final match in the preliminary rounds with a 4-0 win over the Netherlands. Ryuuji Umeda ended his match against Jean Paul de Bruijn with a run of 12 to win 40-27 in 23. And because Jorissen also lost to Miyashita (40-31 in 30), the Dutch are out of the World event and Japan continued as group winners ahead of France.
The rankings in the four groups (match points, average, runs):
Group A:
1 Vietnam 3-1.627-14
2 Turkey 3-1.327-8
3 Spain 2-1.604-9
4 Argentina 0-0.758-5
Quyet Chien Tran, Vietnam
Tayfun Tasdemir, Turkey
Ruben Legazpi, Spain
Phuong Vinh Bao, Vietnam
Group B:
1 South Korea 3-1,458-8
2 USA 2-1,050-7
3 Greece 2-1,013-5
4 Colombia 1-1,193-7\
Jung Han Heo, Korea
Group C (finished):
1 France 5-1,190-9
2 Japan 4-1,206-12
3 Netherlands 3-1,272-7
4 Jordan 0-0,826-7
Jérémy Bury, France
Ryuuji Umeda, Japan
Group D (finished):
1 Sweden 5-1,608-14
2 Belgium 4-1,459-12
3 Germany 2-1,187-8
4 Egypt 1-1,023-7
Torbjörn Blomdahl, Sweden
Eddy Merckx, Belgi
Jef Philipoom, Belgi
Ronny Lindemann, Germany
The quarter-finals are Saturday at 5pm and 8pm. The semi-finals Sunday at 11am and 1pm, the finals at 4pm. All matches can be seen live on AfreecaTV.