ALCAMO - The Italian championship for club teams will take place in the beautiful city of Alcamo in Sicily next week. The venue is the Cittadella dei giovani" (City of Youth) thanks to the municipality of Alcamo which is one of the sponsors. The tournament is played from February 6th -10th. Four of the worlds top players will participate: Marco Zanetti, Frédéric Caudron, Dani Sánchez and Eddy Leppens and Tonny Carlsen one of the well known foreign players.
The Sicilian club of Billiard's Café is hosting the event and defending the title after the victory in last years championship when they took away the title from the Green Planet Gold club of Porcia. Sixteen teams from many parts of Italy are divided in 4 groups playing 4 round robin rounds, each group has a seeded team according to last year results. On the last day, the best from each group will advance to the semi-finals; semifinals losers will battle for third and fourth place, winners for first and second place.
In group A, the seeeded team of Billiard's Café is the defending champion, captained by the main sponsor Francesco Orlando. The very strong line-up is made by Frédéric Caudron, Eddy Leppens, Emilio Sciacca and Francesco Orlando. In group B, the seeded team is Green Planet Gold, vice-champion last year and looking for a revenge. The very competitive team will try to regain the title and is composed of Dany Sánchez, Marco Zanetti, Tonny Carlsen and Fabio Gaiotti.
In group C, all italian team of La Biglia is seeded as for their third place in the last championship with some of the best national players: Farizio Cortese, Libero Picciano, Salvatore Vispo and Roberto Turlà. In the last group D, the other all italian seeded team of SB Revival (4th classified in last championship) shows up with the young talent Alessio D'Agata, Michele Di Tacchio, Michele Matera and Sebastiano Ruocco.
Most of the italian top players will participate in the remaining teams and will fight for a place in the semi-finals: among those are Salvatore Papa, Alfio Basile, Michele Notarrigo and Gabriele Fasciana.