It has been more than 10 years since Luxembourg competed in The European Squash Team Championships (ETC). This year the Fédération de Squash Luxembourgeoise (FSL) has entered a men’s team for the Championships which is great news for the squash community in and around Luxembourg. The Championships will take place in the Frans Otten Stadium, Amsterdam from April 30th – May 3rd 2008. This will be the biggest ETC tournament in history, with 27 men’s teams participating. The National teams, both men & women, have had success in recent years in the European Small Nations Squash Tournament. For the past two years both teams have claimed first place in the tournament which includes Malta, Monaco, Iceland, Liechtenstein and Cyprus. Winning both titles in 2006 when the tournament was hosted by Luxembourg was a major breakthrough and also a first as no other country had previousy won both titles at the same tournament. Not content with this success, the men’s team will be looking to raise their standard to the next level and compete with the best teams in Europe. Not only are the top European teams among the best in the world (with England & France being ranked 1st & 3rd respectively) but many of them include some of the best individual players in the world. This will certainly be a tough task for a Nation as small as Luxembourg but the team is relishing the prospect of playing against such admirable talent.
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Due to not competing for such a long time and having no players competing on the Professional Squash Association Tour (PSA), Luxembourg has not been seeded. The official draw has placed the team in a pool with (seedings in brackets) Ukraine (20) and Latvia (23) in the first phase of the tournament. The teams in this pool are in the First Division (as opposed to the Premier Division which includes the highest ranked teams ). Should we finish 1st, we will be playing off for positions 13 -20 as well as promotion to the Premier Division. This would put Luxembourg in a play-off section with three more knock-out matches to play. Should we finish in 2nd or 3rd place in the pool, we will be playing off for positions 21-28. Ukraine and Latvia represent unknown quantities for the Luxembourg team, and are sure to provide stiff opposition. Success would then mean matches against the likes of Italy (13), Austria (14), Hungary (15) or Belgium (16) and in all of these countries, squash is well-developed, with a big pool of players to choose from, so an even bigger challenge would be guaranteed. Further information: