Flag Football-EC: Review
The biggest European Flag Football Championship is history. A look back.
Reminder: This article was originally published in German language. This post is a translation using DeepL. Please note that parts of the text may be poorly translated and misleading.
Review of the European Flag Football Championship 2023
Wow! The German teams win bronze and gold at the European Flag Football Championships. Over the course of three days, Germany turned the hierarchy in European flag football, which had been in place for almost decades, on its head. A little like the Phoenix from the ashes, both teams rise to the European top.
CONGRATULATIONS!
After the somewhat disappointing 10th place for the women at the last World Cup and the Corona disaster at the men's World Games, this development probably comes as a surprise to many. But the German teams have long since set out to challenge the flag football dominators in Europe for the place in the sun.
People tend to forget that the teams already won medals at the 2015 and 2017 European Championships. At the 2021 World Cup, the women held the Austrians to a draw and narrowly lost out to Mexico and Austria in the group. At the World Games, the men lost to the eventual finalists Italy by just one point and Austria by five.
The continuous work of the past years has now borne fruit. Both teams were able to perform at the decisive moment, did not let themselves be impressed even by being behind and were excellently prepared tactically. As men's national coach Florian Berrenberg put it in a nutshell before the final against Austria: "We were ready for them from day one".
How quickly the teams of other nations are progressing can be seen in the high level of performance, especially in the women's section. All the teams that reached the semi-finals had to accept at least one defeat in the preliminary round.
During the three days of continuous streaming, two things also caught the eye positively. The consistently friendly and comradely interaction between the players and our impression of the refereeing performance was very positive. The two German officials, Mara Steiner and Niko Tzioras, were rewarded for their good performance on the first two days by playing in the final matches.
Disappointments
The delegations from Austria and Great Britain have to digest the biggest disappointments. They had both travelled to Limerick with the goal of two (gold) medals. It was clear before the tournament that the men from the island would not achieve this goal (see Power Ranking I and II). But the fact that the women from Austria would fail against Germany and France was certainly not planned.
The Spanish men will also be very disappointed. With only one win in the group phase, they clearly missed the quarter-finals. The Danish star is now fading for good. Too little seems to have been invested in youth development in recent years to adequately replace the great generation of players around Jonas Bo Hanson.
The Italians should rethink their plan of relying on part-time flag footballers in their national team, who focus on their main sport of tackle football and make continuous work difficult.
The many other nations, some of which were taking part in their first international tournament, have not (yet) been able to cause any surprises. The quarter-finalists are too far ahead in terms of the individual class of their players and their tactics. But despite heavy defeats and only a few touchdowns scored, they will take a mountain of experience with them to build on.
Ah, IFAF...
Unfortunately, the IFAF has to accept criticism as well as a little praise. The almost unspeakable communication in the run-up to future events must be stopped. How are interested parties or even sponsors supposed to get an idea of the event if the participants are only known a few days before the first games and a website is launched without any information? Enquiries by e-mail were basically not answered. Also, the announcement of the results has to be faster and more precise. The German league can do that better and in almost real time! A good step was the launch of the new video platform www.ifaf.tv. All streamed matches are now available for individual viewing. A good livestream that worked almost without exception over the whole three days. Added to that were the knowledgeable commentators. This is something to build on. For the 2024 World Cup, we would of course like to see one or two more streams and more frequent use of the backfield cameras.
IFAF already has the opportunity to prove itself next summer!
