The 2018 Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup, also known as the ''

Huawei Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...

Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup Dubai 2018'' for sponsorship reasons, was the eighth edition of the ''

Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup The Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup is an international beach soccer tournament which is held in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates every November as the finale of the competitive international beach soccer season. The invitation-only tournament ha ...

'', an annual international

beach soccer Beach soccer, also known as beach football, sand football or sand soccer, is a variant of association football played on a beach or some form of sand between two teams of five players each. Association football has long been played informally on ...

tournament contested by men's national teams. Held in

Dubai Dubai (Help:IPA/English, /duːˈbaɪ/ Help:Pronunciation respelling key, ''doo-BYE''; Modern Standard Arabic, Modern Standard Arabic: ; Emirati Arabic, Emirati Arabic: , Romanization of Arabic, romanized: Help:IPA/English, /diˈbej/) is the Lis ...

United Arab Emirates The United Arab Emirates (UAE), or simply the Emirates, is a country in West Asia, in the Middle East, at the eastern end of the Arabian Peninsula. It is a Federal monarchy, federal elective monarchy made up of Emirates of the United Arab E ...

since its inception, this year's event occurred between 6 and 10 November. The tournament was organised by the Dubai Sports Council (DSC) and

Beach Soccer Worldwide Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) is the organisation responsible for the founding and growth of the association football-based sport of beach soccer. The founding partners of BSWW codified the rules of beach soccer in 1992, with BSWW as it is known ...

(BSWW). After the

FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup The FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup is an international beach soccer competition contested by the national teams of the member associations of FIFA, the sport's global governing body. The tournament was preceded by the Beach Soccer World Championshi ...

, the Intercontinental Cup is the biggest tournament in the current international beach soccer calendar. Similar to the

FIFA Confederations Cup The FIFA Confederations Cup was an international association football tournament for men's national teams, held every four years by FIFA. It was contested by the holders of each of the six continental championships ( AFC, CAF, CONCACAF, CONMEBO ...

, eight nations will take part, with one team representing each of the six continental football confederations as well as the current World Cup champions,

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, and the hosts, the

. The tournament started with a round robin group stage. The winners and runners-up from each group advanced to the knockout stage, a series of

single-elimination A single-elimination knockout, or sudden-death tournament is a type of elimination tournament where the loser of a match-up is immediately eliminated from the tournament. Each winner will play another in the next round, until the final match-up, w ...

matches, beginning with the semi-finals and ending with the final. Consolation matches were also played to determine other final rankings. The season-ending Beach Soccer Stars awards were also presented in Dubai as a conclusion to the tournament.

were the defending champions but lost to

Russia Russia, or the Russian Federation, is a country spanning Eastern Europe and North Asia. It is the list of countries and dependencies by area, largest country in the world, and extends across Time in Russia, eleven time zones, sharing Borders ...

in the semi-finals, ultimately finishing third; the defeat ended a 66-game winning streak for ''Canarinhos'', their last loss dating back to the 2015 World Cup (also against Russia).

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran (IRI) and also known as Persia, is a country in West Asia. It borders Iraq to the west, Turkey, Azerbaijan, and Armenia to the northwest, the Caspian Sea to the north, Turkmenistan to the nort ...

beat Russia in the final to claim their second Intercontinental Cup crown.

Participating teams

The following eight teams took part including the hosts, current World Cup winners and one of the best performing nations from each of the six regional championships hosted by the confederations of

FIFA The Fédération Internationale de Football Association (), more commonly known by its acronym FIFA ( ), is the international self-regulatory governing body of association football, beach soccer, and futsal. It was founded on 21 May 1904 to o ...

. However,

CONMEBOL CONMEBOL ( ) or CSF (; ; ), is the continental governing body of football in South America and it is one of FIFA's six continental confederations. The oldest continental confederation in the world, its headquarters are located in Luque, Parag ...

did not enter a regional performer this year, so

UEFA The Union of European Football Associations (UEFA ; ; ) is one of six continental bodies of governance in association football. It governs football, futsal and beach soccer, beach football in Europe and the List of transcontinental countries#A ...

entered two teams. Overall, Europe and Asia were represented by two nations; Africa, South America, North America and Oceania, one nation each. 2018 Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup map of nations

2018 Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup map of nations

1. Qualified as hosts, but also achieved a 2017 AFC Beach Soccer Championship runners-up finish

Venue

The tournament took place in a new part of

for the second consecutive year; this edition is held at an arena on Kite Beach, Jumeirah 3, with a capacity of 3,500. Speaking at the draw event,

BSWW Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) is the organisation responsible for the founding and growth of the association football-based sport of beach soccer. The founding partners of BSWW codified the rules of beach soccer in 1992, with BSWW as it is known ...

Vice-president Joan Cusco was welcoming of the change of location back to a beach venue saying, "this is where we belong". (The previous edition was held in an inland area of Dubai for the first time). On the change of venue,

DSC DSC or Dsc may refer to: Education * Doctor of Science (D.Sc.) * District Selection Committee, an entrance exam in India * Doctor of Surgical Chiropody, superseded in the 1960s by Doctor of Podiatric Medicine Educational institutions * Dyal Sin ...

General Secretary Saeed Hareb stated the Council was in the process of finding a permanent home for the Intercontinental Cup.

Draw

The draw to split the eight teams into two groups of four took place on 10 October at the Dubai Sports Council headquarters at 11:00 GST (

UTC+4 Coordinated Universal Time (UTC) is the primary time standard globally used to regulate clocks and time. It establishes a reference for the current time, forming the basis for civil time and time zones. UTC facilitates international communicat ...

). For the purposes of the draw, the nations were divided into fours sets, Pots 1–4, shown in the table below. From each pot, the first team drawn out was placed into Group A; the other team was drawn into Group B. The teams were allocated to specific positions in their respective groups via the drawing of balls from a further two pots; for the teams entering Group A, Pot A, which contained the positions A1–A4 and for the teams entering Group B, Pot B, containing the positions B1–B4. The hosts, the

, were automatically allocated to position A1. :Note: The numbers in parentheses show the

world ranking A ranking is a relationship between a set of items, often recorded in a list, such that, for any two items, the first is either "ranked higher than", "ranked lower than", or "ranked equal to" the second. In mathematics, this is known as a weak ...

of the teams at the time of the draw.

Group stage

''Matches are listed as local time in

, GST (

)''

Group A

---- ----

Group B

---- ----

5th–8th place play-offs

The teams finishing in third and fourth place were knocked out of title-winning contention, receding to play in consolation matches to determine 5th through 8th place in the final standings.

5th to 8th place semi-finals

Seventh place play-off

Fifth place play-off

Knockout stage

The group winners and runners-up progressed to the knockout stage to continue to compete for the title.

Semi finals

Third place play-off

Final

Awards

Winners trophy

Individual awards

Statistics

Goalscorers

;9 goals * Fedor Zemskov ;8 goals * Rodrigo ;7 goals *

Artur Paporotnyi Artur Sergeyevich Paporotnyi (; born 28 November 1985) is a Russian beach soccer player. Paporotnyi debuted in the Russia national beach soccer team, Russian national beach soccer team in 2011. Since 2013, he is playing for BSC Kristall. Career ...

;6 goals * Moustafa Aly Mohamed * Bruno Xavier * Mohammad Masoumizadeh * Eduard Suarez ;5 goals * Llorenç Gomez * Heiarii Tavanae * Ahmed Beshr * Tearii Labaste * Raimana Li Fung Kuee * Nick Perera ;4 goals * Mohamed Abdelnaby * Igor Melo * Filipe Silva * Tomas Canale * Gabriel Silveira * Javi Torres ;3 goals * Boris Nikonorov * Amirhosein Akbari * Christopher Albiston * Hamid Behzadpour * Ahmed Elshahat * Mauricinho * Datinha * Mostafa Kiani * Ali Mohammadi * Kirill Romanov * Taiarui Heimanu ;2 goals * David Adril * Moustafa Samir * Ali Karim * Hasham Almuntaser * Rafinha * Haitham Atef * Waleed Beshr * Adrian Frutos * Fernando Guisado * Yury Krasheninnikov * Ali Mirshekari * David Mondragon * Mohammad Moradi * Walid Mohammadi * Mohamed Hassane ;1 goal * Mohammed Ahmadzadeh * Franck Revel * Domingo Cabrera * Andrei Novikov * Ariihau Teriitau * Abbas Ali * Salvador "Chiky" Ardil * Mao * Bokinha * Teva Zaveroni * Aleksey Makarov * Moslem Mesigar * Saeid Piramoun * Christopher Toth * Antonio Farias * Salem Heirauarii * Jose Cintas * Maxim Chuzhkov * Dmitry Shishin * Anton Shkarin ;Own goals * Ahmed Beshr (vs. Brazil)
Source

Final standings

References

External links

Intercontinental Beach Soccer Cup Dubai 2018
, at Beach Soccer Worldwide
Intercontinental Cup 2018
at Beach Soccer Russia (in Russian) {{Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup Beach Soccer Intercontinental Cup

International association football competitions hosted by the United Arab Emirates Intercontinental Cup