The news of the week (31)

Daniele Spadaro wins in Malta - The finals of the Attard tournament finally took place on tuesday. Daniele Spadaro had to wait the shoot-out to beat Simon Gauci in the semi-final. In the other semi, Hector Scerri beat Gordon Caruana and qualified for his first final. In the final, Spadaro gave no chance to Scerri and won the game on a clear 2-0.

On the picture, the Mayor of Attard Mr Stefan Cordina presenting the trophy to Daniele Spadaro.

Daniele Spadaro back as number 1 - Thanks to his recent victory in Attard, Daniele Spadaro is the new leader of the WASPA ranking again. Daniele was already leading the table in August but he had to admit Darren Bezzina's supremac from September till December. The full rankings are available in the download section.

No luck for subbuteo in Connecticut - The bad weather had terrible consequences on last sunday's Connecticut Open to be organizd in Wallingford. Many players were unable to travel and therefore the number of entries dropped from 9 to 3. Andrea Gasparini won the trophy but unfortunately the tournament will nout get the WASPA status due to the low turnout (less than 4 players).

A Belgian in Singapore - Stéphane Lambert (SC Flanders) will be the first Belgian to travel to Singapore for table football in March. The guy from Antwerp will be playing the FISTF Satellite over there and will hopefully be able to play some WASPA games during his stay in Asia.

Big success for the Subbuteo relaunch in London - This tuesday was a great day for the beautiful game of Subbuteo as the spanish company Netcam officially presented the new version of the game. Former international football player John Barnes was there to present the new material that will be available in the shops in the UK in March. Hopefully many other nations will be able to find distributors in the next few months. The relaunch of subbuteo matches with the European Football championship to be played next summer in Poland and Ukraine. Youc an read an article from the Sun at http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/4083286/Subbuteo-news-Footie-ace-John-Barnes-launches-game-comeback.html and some pictures of the presentation at http://www.flickr.com/photos/tomgrovesphoto/6755242867/

FISTF world cup cancelled or relocated? - The FISTF Board has decided to cancel the FISTF World Cup to be played on July 21 & 22 in Athens, Greece. The Board explained the economical crisis in Greece doesn't guarantee the tournament could take place in good conditions. Hopefully an alternative solution will be found in the next few days so that the world cup will take place in another country. Having no world cup this year would be a total disaster for the game and for those who are working with young players in order to be ready for the most important competition of the season.

Forthcoming events - Here is a list of the forthcoming WASPA tournaments. We hope many more will be added in the near future. You can see the contact person for every tournament in the section "forthcoming events" (on the right column).
- February 10 - Tournament in Attard, Malta
- February 24-26 - Tournament in Cincinnatti, Ohio (USA)
- March 4 - Tournament in Singapore
- Tournament in Adelaide (Australia) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Trenton, Ontario (Canada) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Johannesburg (South Africa) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Templeuve (Belgium) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Nicosia (Cyprus) -> Details coming soon
- Tournament in Stockholm (Sweden) -> Details coming soon

Top 10 nations this week on the blog - This week the bigger number of visitors came from the UK, the US, Italy, Germany, Ireland, Singapore, Canada, Greece, Belgium and Cyprus.

Have a great week-end and keep on flicking,
Vincent