Men’s EuroHockey Championship III (Kirklareli, Türkiye) – day two round-up

Ukraine, Bulgaria and Türkiye all recorded their second successive wins to advance to the semi-finals with Lithuania moving into pole position to grab the other spot after their impressive win over Luxembourg.

Wednesday’s schedule sees the Lithuanians looking to get a win over Finland to ensure they advance while Luxembourg face Türkiye in Pool B while Malta meet Hungary and Ukraine face Bulgaria in the closing Pool A games.

Pool A

Hungary 1 Ukraine 10

Ukraine put in a second dominant performance to defeat Hungary and advance to the final four. The goals were shared around with Maksym Onofriiuk netting three and Vitalii Shevchuk getting two while five other scorers were on the list.

Malta 2 Bulgaria 3

Bulgaria produced an almighty final quarter comeback with three goals in the last 11 minutes seeing them comeback from 2-0 down to record their second win of the week.

Malta looked on course to earn the points when Keith Bajada’s first half goal was augmented by a Tom Degiovanni penalty corner effort with 17 minutes remaining.

But the Bulgarians profited as Malta endured two sin-binnings in the last 11 minutes with all the goals coming in that time, Valentin Georgiev and Bogomil Pavlov equalising before Georgi Baklev won the day from the penalty spot. Bulgaria advance to the semi-finals as a result.

Rank	Team	Pl	W	D	L	GF	GA	Pts
1	Ukraine	2	2	0	0	19	2	6
2	Bulgaria	2	2	0	0	5	3	6
3	Malta	2	0	0	2	3	12	0
4	Hungary	2	0	0	2	2	12	0

Pool B

Lithuania 3 Luxembourg 1

A Povilias Sinkevičius hat trick saw Lithuania move up to second spot in the pool and in contention for a spot in the playoff phase. The goal machine scored in both the 10^th and 12^th minute before giving his side an extra advantage early in the second half and while Luxembourg did hit back via an Oscar Lutgen goal, they had too much to do.

Finland 0 Türkiye 5

Hosts Türkiye became the third side to make it into the semi-finals as three goals in Q3 proved the key difference between the teams. Furkan Ataş got the only goal of the first half but it was the three goals in six minutes from Mehmet Aydian, Ataş and Ali Akin Özkiliç which confirmed the direction of the points. Müslüm Elagöz closed out the win.

Rank	Team	Pl	W	D	L	GF	GA	Points
1	Türkiye	2	2	0	0	13	0	6
2	Lithuania	2	1	0	1	3	9	3
3	Luxembourg	2	0	1	1	3	5	1
4	Finland	2	0	1	1	2	7	1

Wednesday schedule

Time	Teams	Title
09:00	MLT – HUN	Pool A
11:15	UKR – BUL	Pool A
16:00	LTU – FIN	Pool B
18:15	TUR – LUX	Pool B