Group B began with the defending champions in action – FC Mahou. Our winners from 12 months ago in Mallorca were up against Gosham Rangers.

FC Mahou had a lot of pedigree in these tournaments with 2 x Cup wins and 1 x Plate win in Open Age tournaments. They also had the Veterans title from last year. They came into this year's tournament on the back of 7 successive victories – could Gosham Rangers stop them?

It was never going to be easy but perhaps meeting FC Mahou first up may have given a glimmer of hope before the champions got into their stride. That was fine in theory but in practice it appeared like FC Mahou had never been away.

Mike Brandon sent them on their way when he opened the scoring for 1-0. He doubled his team's lead before Pete Armstrong got in on the act to complete a fine 3-0 victory.

Match 2 saw two very experienced teams in our events meet head to head. It was Water Boy making their 7th eurofootballfives.com appearance versus Dickie Dogs making their 8 th appearance.

With two such experienced teams it is probably no surprise that these teams had already met in our tournaments. We take you back to the 2015 Algarve Veterans Tournament and to Game #9 of Group B. 3 years ago Dickie Dogs emerged from the game with a 1-0 win under their belts. Caspar Clark's goal was the match-winner on that occasion.

Back in 2018 it was another keenly contested match by the two teams. Similarly to three years ago the match would take just one goal to settle it. Bernardo Agostinho was the man to score the goal this time as Water Boy gained some form of revenge from that previous defeat. The Portuguese were up and running in this year's tournament.

The final teams in Round 1 of Group B to start their challenge were Mavericks versus WEEDS Youth.

As with the game above, this was two teams who were regulars in our events and had met in a previous tournament. This time we go back to the 2016 Lisbon Tournament when a combined WEEDS team were making their debut. They met in the very first game of Group B in Lisbon and it was a game Mavericks won 1-0 thanks to a Grant Taylor goal.

Two years on and they were to meet early on in the tournament again – with a similar outcome. Mavericks did the double over their opponents as they picked up another 1-0 victory. This time it was Manish Madhvani who struck the decisive blow.

It was a good start for Mavericks and plenty of time to recover for WEEDS Youth with another 6 games to kickstart their challenge.