Ethio Fin Sports Club completed 4th place in ESCFE Zurich 2019 tournament.
Ethio Fin Sports Club participated in the last months ESCFE tournament in 2019 for 7th times in a row. As always the football club designated official flight that players and fans could take for reaching host city. Players start arriving at Zurich 2 days before the tournament begins. Most players arrived in Zurich one day before the tournament begins. All the players stayed in a hotel near the tournament venue around Zurich airport. The club also rented intermediate passenger car for easy mobility.
As always EthioFin Sports club has been preparing for a month for the tournament. Players met 3 times a week to raise their fitness level and practice different drills and technics.
Ethio Fin was labeled in Group D with Ethio Norway, Ethio Emilia, Ethio Nuremberg, and EthioFrance Buna. Group stage results are
Wednesday 31 July 2019
Ethio Fin 0: 0 Ethio Norway
Ethio Fin 4: 0 Ethio Emilia ( Goal scored by: Nahom E. ,Ezan , Bazen , Sami)
Thursday 1 Aug 2019
Ethio Fin 13: 0 Ethio Nuremberg (Goal scored by: Nahom E.(2) , Sami(7), Sewnet(2), fitsum E, Yonas and Japheth )
Ethio Fin 0: 0 Ethio France buna
Quarter Final
Ethio Fin qualifies to quarter-final after standing second in group D following EthiFrance Buna. We faced group C number one Ethio Stuttgart the next day at 11 o’clock.
The QuarterFinal game was the most challenging game so far. Ethio Fin captain Ezan has returned back to Finland due to work. A couple of the players were exhausted from the previous games. These things put lots of pressure on the team. Once the game started, EthioFin played with caution. Both teams played well and created goal-scoring opportunities. Full time was completed with a goalless draw. So, directly followed by a penalty shoot-out to identify a winner. Ethio Fin scored 4 out of the 5 penalty kicks and become victorious. Ethio Fin Goalkeeper Kabinad raised hero after saving penalties and scoring the winning shot.
QuarterFinal result is
Friday 2 Aug 2019
Ethio Fin 0(4) : 0(3) EthioStuttgart
The victory was historic as EthioFin is going to play SemiFinals for the first time in the tournament history. Afternoon opponent was EthioHolland. This team is last year’s runner up.
Semi Final
The semi-final was played the same day as the quarter-final game in the afternoon at 15:00. Before the match started a couple of players were pulled out of the game due to injuries from previous games and exhaustion. Lack of squad depth at EthioFin in such competition has been an issue in recent years.
EthioHolland scored an early goal in the first half. After that Ethio Fin dominated the game and created a lot of goal scoring opportunities. However, none of those efforts were converted to goals and the game ended 1-0 defeat for Ethio Fin.
SemiFinal result is
Friday 2 Aug 2019
Ethio Fin 0 : 1 EthioHolland
Though it was a great achievement to reach semi-finals for the first time, it was a bitter defeat as we could have won the game with our dominance and goal scoring chances we created.
In ESCFE tournament 3rd place games are not played. Instead, it is a coin toast. Ethio Fin loses the coin toss against EthioZurich. The Final was between Ehtio France Buna and Ethio Holland. Ethio France Buna won the title by a penalty shoot-out.
” …so as you can imagine Zurich 2019 was good and the team has achieved the goal it sets before departure that was to make it to the semifinals. We had a really good team with experience and youth at every department from Goalkeeper to attackers. We played mostly an attractive football and all of our players commitment was second to none. Loosing important players like our captain Ezana and two of our brilliant youg attackers Nahom Eyob and Fitsum Eyob for injuries had tempered our opportunity and we couldn’t go further in the competition. We are also grateful for the support we get from our bench special mention to Tedy, Yoni, Ashu, Moges, Lidet, Simeret, Maty and Tinsu.
The moral as well as financial support of our friends who couldn’t make it to the tournament has also been incredible, THANK YOU!! Zekir was our shirt sponsor, Thank you Zak!! I hope we can only take strength from 2019!! … ”EthioFin Coach and player Fitsum Dagne
At Zurich tournament, EthioFin Sports Club was represented by Tewodros Guday. Tewodros is a co-founder of the sports club. He commented that
“I should say that what I see in Zurich in terms of the team quality and outcome was the purpose why we found Ethiofin. It tooks long time to see the dream come true. However I believe it doesn’t stop there and with the new youngster we can do better in the feature. Keep the spirit and stick together. That is the only way to achieve this kind of result. There was a time I order new game jersey and take all to Amsterdam, but because of shortage players, we didnt even play one game and take the entire jersey back to home 🙁
I am very happy to see this kind of changes in this team. I can tell you that if we keep this spirit, it may not take long us to even to host the event here in Helsinki. #DreamBig!
Thank you to all of you!”Tewodros Guday
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