MIA team for Euro Airports Championship at Chadwell Heath
Bid to win cup for first time
The Malta International Airport (MIA) football team will be playing at the 14th European Airports Football Championship (EAFC), this year to be hosted by London City Airport between June 4 and 6.
The MIA team will be one of 16 representing other European airports at the championships which will be played at Chadwell Heath, the training grounds of Premier League side West Ham United.
The team is currently undergoing regular training sessions and has played a number of friendly matches as they look to put up a commendable performance in London and, perhaps, for the first time bring home the cup that has eluded them so much in recent past.
The MIA team was drawn in Group Three along with Hannover, Birmingham and Athens.
Group One comprises Munich, Stansted, Nice and Salzburg while Lyon, Newcastle, Cork and Vienna will play in Group Two.
Group 4 is composed of London City, Southampton, Dublin and Frankfurt.
The MIA team will play their first match against Athens before taking on Birmingham. They complete their group commitments against Hannover.
The first edition of the championship was held in 1984 and was hosted by Dublin Airport. The concept behind the tournament was to organise a sport and social event for airport employees on the same lines of similar tournaments which were then very popular among airline employees.
Since Dublin 1984, the biennial tournament has grown in stature and established itself as the main football event for European airports.
Malta's first participation was in 1994 in Shannon, Ireland.
Despite being the smallest participating airport, the MIA team did manage to reach the final in two successive editions in 2002 and 2004.
The MIA hosted the event in 2000, which still ranks as the most popular ever with a record participation of 20 airports.
The format of the tournament is structured in such a manner that all teams play the same number of matches in the first two rounds, with a second competition, the Airport Shield, serving as an incentive for those teams eliminated after the first phase.
The first round is played in a round-robin format with the top two progressing to the Championship Cup while the other two sides will go on to compete for the Airport Shield.
The Championship Cup and the Airport Shield are played on the same format with the qualified teams placed in two groups of four teams each with the winners and the runners-up team of each group progressing to the semi-finals of the two respective competitions.
MIA participation
1994 Shannon - Placed 14th
1996 Vienna - Placed 6th
1998 Copenhagen - Placed 5th
2000 Malta - Placed 8th
2002 Dublin - Placed 2nd
2004 Salzburg - Placed 2nd
2008 Munich - Placed 12th