The men’s EuroHockey U21 Indoor Championship is ready to roll in Geneva as Switzerland hosts the top tier competition at the Centre Sportif du Bout du Monde.
Eight teams will vye for the title with title holders Austria in Pool A alongside Czechia, Italy and Türkiye while Pool B has the Swiss home side, Denmark, Croatia and Poland.
The action begins on Friday morning with all 20 matches from the weekend being broadcast live on www.eurohockeytv.org. You can also follow all the live scores here. Read the team by team previews below!
Pool A
Austria
Top division appearances: 15
Best performance: Winners – 5 times (2007, 2013, 2015, 2019, 2023)
Austria go into the competition as one of the sides to watch having won this title for four of the last five editions and they have not been out of the top two since 2004.
They are captained by Mateusz Nyckowiak who is already an established senior international and – along with Max Meisel – is one of two players back for a second shot at U21 glory.
Mesiel is part of a strong Hamburg connection – he plays with UHC Hamburg along with Moritz Zotter while Anuga Munaweera is with Harvestehuder THC.
Their main preparation saw them compete in the Röhrmax Cup in Arminen last week where they beat the USA senior team and the SV Arminen club side alongside losses to the senior Croatia, Poland and Belgian sides.
Czechia
Appearances: 10
Best performance: Winners (2002)
Czechia will be looking to build on their fourth place in 2023, their best outcome in 19-years, and potentially push for the medals in Geneva.
Their team is under the leadership of head coach Miroslav Ludvík and his assistants Aleš Peřinka and the vastly experienced international David Vacek.
The main influencers from that 2023 tournament are Lukáš Stibor and Martin Plachý (pictured) while they do have a livewire goalkeeper Jiří Červený to rely on between the posts. He produced a series of heroics for TJ Plzen Litice in the Euro Hockey League against Rotterdam and Austrian side SV Arminen to showcase his talent.
Plachý is amont the goalscorers to watch, scoring 16 times for Slavia Prague in the indoor seasons to date with club mate František Toms netting nine. Jakub Homolka is another TJ Plzen Litice man and he has fired home 15 this term.
Italy
Appearances: 4
Best performance: 4th (2019)
Italy are making their fifth appearance in the top division having impressed in 2023 when they claimed fifth spot. Captain Alessandro Calzolari (pictured) is the one link between the two teams with this year’s line-up providing a very youthful look – they have five players aged 17 or younger.
Valerio Iossa has scored some spectacular goals at outdoor Under-18 international level, making him one to watch. The side also features twins Matteo and Cristian Frizzi.
Their panel sees the women’s U21 coaching team also in situ, Petr Bodnar this time as head coach and Richard Kotrc as his assistant.
Türkiye
Appearances: 4
Best performance: 5th (2019)
Türkiye embark on their fifth top division appearance with a new look side with only Cihan Korkmaz bridging the teams between 2023 and this weekend.
It is a side which hails from far and wide with Mertcan Bakal representing Kartepe just outside Istanbul while Gökdeniz Kandemir, Nedim Öge and Zeynel Öz are based over 1,000km away in Suruç near the Syrian border.
Öz will be one to watch in front of goal; he already has 23 goals this season in the Turkish Super League from nine games. Hasan Korkmaz plays for current league leaders Gaziantep Polisgücü.
Pool B
Croatia
Appearances: 5
Best performance: 5th (2017)
Croatia have the most relative experience of this competition with nine of their wider panel remaining eligible to return to the competition.
Indeed, HK Concordia 1906’s Luka Mesarić and HK Zelina’s Bruno Hrupec are now in their third cycle of EuroHockey U21 indoor championships. The former will be one of their key men for goals, scoring 12 times in 11 matches at this level, including eight in Nymburk in 2023.
The squad hails mainly from the top three Croatian clubs: Zelina, Concordia and Mladost while they have two players playing in Germany: Matthias Bachmann playing for Schwarz-Weiss Köln and Noa Sluga with Stuttgart Kickers.
This is their fourth successive appearance in the top tier with their best performance coming in 2017 when they finished in fifth place.
Denmark
Appearances: 8
Best performance: 4th (1996, 2007)
Denmark will hopen an extensive preparation could aid their bid for a first medal at this level. The team started preparing in October and has been together in several camps up until Christmas where the final selection of the squad was made by the coaches Lasse Steinmetz and Jonas Graversen.
In January, they played in the Mason Cup in Lyngby and were matched by senior teams from Ireland, Denmark, Germany and Scotland and showed great progress throughout the games – winning the tournament by beating the Scottish side Western Wildcats in the final.
Hector Nørgaard, Oliver Sørensen, Rasmus Westrup, Magnus Thorsted, Frederik Moll and Oliver Bechtold have all played U21 Euro competitions before and the first four (Hector Nørgaard, Oliver Sørensen, Rasmus Westrup, Magnus Thorsted) have further played with the senior men’s A-team in Cyprus and Portugal 2022 and 2024.
Nørgaard, Sørensen, Westrup, Thorsted and Moll have further good experience from several European campaigns with Danish Champions Slagelse HK.
Youngster Julius Arnborg Lund captained the Under-16 national team playing Hockey5s in Georgia last summer and will play first time in U21 accompanied with other young talents like Axel Refnov and Frederik Trebbien.
Niels Henrik Sørensen, Head of Elite, Danish Hockey Federation, said of the event: “We have prepared well and are ready and looking forward to an exciting tournament in Geneva. We were very excited and humble to secure our spot in the A-division last time in 2023 and will do our utmost to repeat this achievement again this year.”
Poland
Appearances: 16
Best performance: Winners – 3 times (1996, 2009, 2017)
An ever-present since 1985, they have won medals on 11 occasions in this format of competition and will be looking to upgrade the bronze medal they won in Nymburk in 2023.
A quartet of that vintage competes once again with captain Jakub Hołosyniuk (pictured) among them. The 20-year-old is one of the rising stars in the panel, playing with the senior outdoor side who stunned the likes of Ireland and Wales in the EuroHockey Championship outdoor qualifiers. He also played in the Hockey 5s World Cup in Oman last January.
Goalkeeper Maksymilian Pawlak – who plays now with DTV Hannover – won a senior indoor silver medal in Leuven last year where he was deployed as the reserve between the posts. Jakub Mikołajczak played in the outdoor Junior World Cup in 2021 with his fellow AZS AWF Poznań club mate completing the quartet.
Indeed, 10 of the players are with Poznań clubs with Jan Sytek (from LKS Gasawa) and Pawlak the only ones from elsewhere.
The side is coached by senior team coach Dariusz Rachwalski with support from Robert Grzeszczak.
Switzerland
Appearances: 16
Best performance: Winners – 2 times (1992, 2011)
Hosts Switzerland are looking to push for a third title having reached the final two years ago in Nymburk and they have four players returning to the cause: Louis Thijs, Yannick Hug, Léonard Kraxner and Jens Flück.
They are also looking to build on outdoor success having won gold in Lausanne in the second tier, qualifying for the Junior World Cup as a result.
They started their preparation the weekend after Christmas with a training camp and test games against Italy in Lucerne. The following weekend, they traveled to Böblingen where they won the New Year’s tournament. For finishing touches, they went to Mannheim for a series of training and test matches against several teams from TSV Mannheim.
The panel features a quartet of players from Swiss national champions while Jonathan Baumbach (Harvestehuder THC), Hug (TuS Obermenzing) and Kraxner (YHC Hamburg) are all based in Germany.
