The path leading to the 2014 IBSA Goalball World Championships is getting a lot shorter with the tournament just out of sight behind a few bends.
 
This weekend (23-25 May) will be another pre-Worlds tournament taking place for some of the top teams to use as they fine tune everything leading into Espoo. Some of the other competing teams will be using this weekend as they now start their lead up to the 2014 IBSA Goalball European Championships Men & Women B to be held in Hungary this September.
 
The 10 competing male teams have been split into two equal pools. The top four teams have been seeded according to the rankings. The first and third seeds (Turkey and Spain) have been placed in Pool A along with Hungary, Croatia and Italy. While Pool B is headed by the second and fourth seeds (Finland and Czech Republic) and followed by host nation Slovenia as well as Kosovo and Azerbaijan. The unseeded teams were drawn out of a hat to select which pool they fell into.
 
Day one of competition will feature all of the round robin matches. The matches are spread over two halls.
 
Day 2 will consist of all the quarter-finals semi-finals, placing matches and finals.
 
The expected highlights of day one will be when the seeds come up against each other. Finland will hope to turn around there recent results against Czech Republic who seem to have a hold over the current Paralympic champions at the moment. Turkey will also be out for revenge against Spain who defeated Turkey last on Turkish home soil during the semi-finals at last year’s IBSA Goalball European Championships A division.
 
If you would like to follow the results they will be available on Twitter @IzolaGoalball and the official #tag of the tournament is #Izola2014.