EXTRA TIME

Double Delight Day

November 17, 2019 at 2:59 pm Leave a comment

Saturday was a day of double delight for Austrian sports fans. It was exactly at the same time that the Austrian football team qualified for the finals of the European Championship 2020 and Austrian tennis star Dominic Thiem reached the final of the ATP finals.

It was really at the same time when these two events took place in different locations: the football team played in the Ernst Happel Stadium in Vienna, and Dominic’s semifinal win over last year’s ATP Finals winner Alexander Zverev took place in the O2 in London.

Albeit the finals now will not be played at the same time of course! Dominic’s final against Stefanos Tsitsipas is played this Sunday evening, whereas the football fans have to wait until 12 June 2020 until the European Championships will kick off.

At the beginning of the European Championship 60 years ago, the finals were only played by four teams which had qualified via knock-out rounds. Now, in 2020, 24 nations will participate and the finals will not be played only in one or two countries, but will be hosted by twelve host cities in 12 countries from 12 June – 12 July. The venues are in: Azerbaijan, Denmark, England, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Republic of Ireland, Romania, Russia, Scotland, and Spain.

The draw for the final tournament will be held on 30 November 2019, 18:00, in Bucharest, Romania. The 24 teams which have qualified as winners or runners-up of their qualifying groups are drawn into six groups of four. There will be also four play-off teams which qualified for the play-offs via the Nations League (if they have not yet qualified by winning or being runners-up of their groups). These teams are not known at the time of the draw, and will be identified as play-off winners 1 to 4. Complicated and not easily understandable!

The recent tennis tournament in London is much easier to comprehend: The eight players who were ranked best in the ATP world rankings qualified for the ATP Finals in London where they were seeded in to four groups, playing out the winner and the runner-up of their respective group according to a Round-Robin format. All singles matches are the best of three tie-break sets, including the final.

So we will know who is the ATP Champion 2019 tonight: Thiem or Tsitsipas? The match begins at 19:00! Fingers crossed for Dominic!!!

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