Which women´s teams are going to play in Mladá Boleslav? — 28.05.2015

Elite floorball teams are heading for Mladá Boleslav again after four years. During the first week in October, the town in Central Bohemia will host the Floorball Champions Cup for the second time already.  Despite there are more than five months left until the first face-off of this floorball champions´ encounter, we already know the list of participants who qualified for their spot among the elite.

It´s a bit of a paradoxical situation, but the last Champions Cup finalists will not play in the 2015 tournament. The last year´s winners from IF Djurgårdens, Sweden, were eliminated in the quarterfinals of the Swedish Superleague play-offs. And 1. SC Vítkovice Oxdog´s dream about their participation in the Czech Superfinal, which would guarantee them a spot in the 2015 Champions Cup, vanished into smoke in the overtime of the decisive seventh semifinal match against Chodov. While Sweden is going to send their champions from KAIS Mora IF to Mladá Boleslav, the Czechs will have two teams in the tournament. The Czech champions, Florbal Chodov, will be joined by the silver medalists Herbadent Praha 11 SJM.

Finland, like four years ago, will be represented in Mladá Boleslav by Classic from Tampere. Their squad still includes the ageless legend and the best scorer in the history of the Finnish top league, Katriina Saarinen. However, much more attention is attracted by the Alanko sisters, with the elder of the two, Eliisa Alanko, being currently one of the world´s best floorball players. By the way, at the 2011 Champions Cup, Eliisa was selected to the tournament all-star team.

The Swiss club Piranha Chur is the only women´s team that defended the league title in their country and qualified for the 2015 Champions Cup. The Piranhas´ squad includes, among others, the Czech player Hanka Lacková. In the Swiss Superfinal, Chur defeated UHC Dietlikon 5:3 and earned their spot in the 2015 Champions Cup. The team coached by the former excellent Swiss national team player Natalia Stadelmann will have to deal with the loss of two key players, the Finns Karjalainen and Ukkonen, but it´s already clear now that the team will be joined by the prolific scorer Priska von Rickenbach next season.

These five teams will then be complemented by Sveiva IB from Norway, which qualified for the Champions Cup by winning the 2014 EuroFloorball Cup, beating another Norwegian team, IBK Tunet, by 6:3. By the way, the teams also faced each other in this year´s final of the Norwegian top league, which ended with Sveiva´s narrow win by 6:5.

Photo: Per Wiklund, www.perwiklund.se