The EMF Champions League starts its existence this year, in 2016. From the 23rd to the 25th of September 68 teams from 23 european countries will play for the title of best Minifootball Club in Europe!
We are speaking about a new large scale event that fills a huge gap in the world of minifootball. We met the CEO of the EMF, Thanos Papadopoulos and we discussed with him about the goals and the background of this big step.
The EMF Champions League is a brand new competition for the EMF. What are your feelings for this start?
Every start in life is difficult and we do not expect it to be different in this case. The EMF is a young Federation but it has done huge steps of progress in the last 5 years. Millions of players in Europe, thousands of sport facilities in our network, tens of millions of TV spectators at the European Championship every year and new challenges with the visibility of the European minifootball in the Arabic countries through new TV deals. Well, all these things show that there is a real big story behind the EMF and we are just the servers of this idea. After all, you asked me how I feel for this star: I feel challenged and blessed to belong to the most creative sport community in Europe! Let’s do it! We can discuss the results in some weeks.
Are you confident for the success?
We are absolutely confident for the preparation we have done and we believe that we are going to live some historic minifootball moments in Maribor. There are teams around Europe that play minifootball in their National Leagues for many years and they could never imagine that such a huge dream would become real. The passion, the dreams and the unbelievable addiction of those teams and people are our motivation in order to succeed.
Could you share with us some secrets regarding the EMF Champions League and its strategy?
There are not secrets in the EMF and definitely we want to share with our followers all the important information regarding the competition. 68 teams will take part in the first version of the EMF Champions League and they come from 23 countries. This number is amazing. Next year, we are going to have participations from almost all members, which means probably from about 35 countries. We wanted from the beginning to create the top European Minifootball network in Europe in terms of clubs. There are several clubs that belong to the elite but did not happen to take one of the first 4 positions in their countries. In this way, we decided to work on a mixed model of winning teams and contract teams. There are teams that are already big clubs in their countries and minifootball needs those teams to represent the sport. Being real minifootball champion does not mean necessarily that you win the trophy, but also to be a fair team, to have many fans, to have long history, to be as crazy as it needs! These are our ambassadors. And we are proud that we have them all under our umbrella and they will compete for the first time in minifootball history.