Report by the WBSC Europe Baseball Commission
WBSC Europe Baseball Technical Committee has decided about the system of qualification on its meeting in Zagreb in January. At that time, nobody thought about any war, we had Belarus involved in our schedule too.
We took into
consideration several options, looking also at the possibilities of organizers
who mostly have only one field so we could have involved only six or five
teams. Number of countries that applied for a qualifier as well as our experience
from past that not all the teams always arrive were also important facts for our
decision.
At last we
have decided about double qualification system and following rules:
- 2
countries (France, Slovakia) have relegated from 2021 European Championship
- 2
countries will advance to 2023 European Championship
- 3
winners of 3 qualifiers (France, Switzerland, Hungary) in 2022 will play a play-off
tournament in the first half of 2023 – only 2 of them will advance to European
Championship
- these
2 winners plus 14 other countries will make the total number of 16
participating teams
- this
rules will apply only if all qualifying teams can participate
Russia
ended on the 9th place in 2021. We still have not decided about 2023
and time for the decision is getting shorter.
In 2022
tournaments have been played in three cities – Utena (Lithuania), Belgrade
(Serbia) and Blagoevgrad (Bulgaria). We would like to thank to all tree organizers,
especially their flexibility with all the schedule changes was very helpful. We
also thank to umpires, technical commissioners and scorers. Their job is never
easy and above that we are aware that they did not work there in the capacity
they should have.
Most important
is that we could have played.
Congratulations to France, Switzerland and Hungary, qualifying teams. Huge thanks to all other teams who did they best on the fields.
Petr Ditrich
WBSC Europe Baseball Vice President
Photo by Glenn Gervot