The final day of the junior championship will decide the final team standings in the tournament.
It is already certain that Lithuania and Ireland will be relegated from the elite group. Neither team has won the European Championship so far, although Lithuania came very close to retaining their place. It only lost the win against Belgium due to a failure to comply with the pitching rule. The game will be played from 1 pm at Kraví hora, the home stadium of Technika Brno.
But most of the attention will of course be on the medal game. Italy will play the Czech Republic for bronze, Spain and the Netherlands for gold. The two pairs have already met at the tournament.
The game for 3rd place is scheduled for 2 pm at the YD Baseball Arena. Italy lost to Spain narrowly 2:3 and had the victory within reach. On the other hand, the Czech team did not catch the start of the game against the Netherlands and was far from winning. The Czech Republic won the group in Ostrava 9:3 thanks to three home runs.
The final will be played at 6 pm at the same stadium. Both participants are already assured of advancing to the World Cup and will now face off for the championship trophy. In the group stage at Hluboká, it was Spain who rejoiced, winning only in the set inning 4:3. The Netherlands can win their 18th European championship title and Spain their first ever gold medal from the European Championship in this age category.
Germany and France will play for 5th place. Both teams finished 3rd in the group, Germany beat Great Britain yesterday, France beat Israel. Germany will definitely finish worse than in the last tournament (3rd), France is defending 5th place. The game will be played from 10 am on the field of the Dragons Brno.
Great Britain, who advanced to the European Championship from the qualification, will play Israel for the final 7th position. This is where Israel finished last year. The match will be played from 4 pm on the field of Hippos Brno.
The luckier of the matches for 9th-12th place, i.e. Belgium and Austria, will face each other for 9th place. For Belgium it is certainly a success, as they advanced to the tournament from the qualification round. Austria finished eighth at the last European Championship. The game will be played at 12 am at the U Hrocha stadium.
All matches will be streamed again on YouTube WBSCEurope, photos can be found here