Papendrecht’s PKC easily won the first of the new European tournament “IKF Champions League Final”. In Delft, the team beat their arch-rival Fortuna by convincing numbers: 19-10.
The Papendrecht team were parents from the start and within minutes they were leading 6-1. Forced to make do without Daan Preuninger, ill Fortuna looked around in disappointment, never recovering from this crucial gap.
PKC defender Olav van Wijngaarden scored a series of beautiful goals to contribute to the score and set the game early. Fortuna tried to limit the damage and fired a few more shots at Celeste Split, but was unable to prevent her from inflicting a massive defeat against her arch-rivals.
“I didn’t foresee this going to happen,” PKC coach Wim Scholtmeijer said happily. “Fortuna had a completely off day and we used it perfectly, but I certainly didn’t expect to win with these big numbers.” Fortuna coach Ard Korporaal saw the defeat come after the opening phase: “You know that can happen. against PKC. Once the game intervened and we managed to come back from such a deficit but unfortunately not tonight. Sorry we couldn’t make an exciting pot out of it.
Criticism of the new tournament format
The Champions League final is the successor to the European Cup and aims to raise the overall level of European korfball and increase competition between them by enabling teams of comparable strength to compete more with each other. Still, two Dutch teams are in the final. Wim Scholtmeijer, PKC coach and former TeamNL national coach, criticizes the situation: “It’s a shame for the sport that we played in the final in the Netherlands. So I’m not a fan of the new tournament format. Teams in other countries don’t understand this “playing better against us because the level gap is still huge right now.”
Fortuna trainer Korporaal, on the other hand, sees the situation differently and does not see a bad development. “It’s not ideal for the Netherlands to dominate global corfball right now, but that’s the situation we’re in right now. I see this dominance in other sports as well, and that’s how it is.”
Solution
Still, Scholtmeijer sees a solution to strengthen mutual competition: “The International Korfball Federation should make it possible for korfball players from other countries to come to the Netherlands to play korfball. Clubs need to embrace and fund this plan, which may be at the expense of our own youth, but overall it is a good development for the sport.”
Source: NOS
I’m George Gonzalez, a professional journalist and author at The Nation View. With more than 5 years of experience in the field, I specialize in covering sports news for various print media outlets. My passion for writing has enabled me to craft stories that capture the attention of readers all over the world.
