Welcome to Barcelona! The stage was set for our twelth Barcelona tournament and the ninth edition of the Barcelona Fives. This annual event has been staged every year since 2008 and 2016 sees our largest ever single tournament. Our 5-a-side tournament saw us welcome 32-teams assembled from England, France, Ireland, Italy, Northern Ireland and Spain.

It used to be customary in the World Cup for the defending champions to play in the opening match of the tournament and that is how we began the 2016 Barcelona Fives with Club Esportiu Llefia (Spa) versus Ealing Expendables (Eng).

This game could throw up some surprises with Senegal beating France in 2002 and Cameroon defeating Argentina in 1990. Club Esportiu Llefia would be hoping not to fall victim to the same circumstance.

After the early exchanges it looked like Club Esportiu Llefia might succumb just like France and Argentina. Ealing Expendables got off to a cracker of a start by taking a 1-0 lead in this fixture. James Oldham the man to score their first of the tournament.

David Martin Montes spared the Spanish team's blushes though with an equaliser which made it 1-1. It was still a great start for Ealing Expendables against the defending champions and bode well for the rest of the tournament.

Each round of games in each group of the group phase would be played simultaneously. So, as Club Esportiu Llefia (Spa) versus Ealing Expendables (Eng) kicked off on pitch A the adjacent pitch B kicked off with Giggs Boson FC (Eng) versus Real Sosobad (Ire).

Both teams were on debut and about to mark their bow not only in Barcelona Fives competition but also eurofootballfives.com competition.

Giggs Boson FC seemed to take to European football like the proverbial duck to water. It was they who opened the scoring through Connor Lawson and from there they never looked back. Will Davis doubled the lead to make it 2-0 before Connor Lawson bagged his second and the points looked destined to go the way of the English side.

Matt Hosier piled on the pressure for Real Sosobad as he made it 4-0 before Will Davis added his second of the game to round off his team's superb 5-0 victory.

The next fixture in the opening round of Group A was Smithfields OAPs (Ire) versus Naranjitos (Spa). It was the second Irish team drawn in the group versus the second Spanish team drawn in Group A.

Like their compatriots, Smithfields OAPs were marking their eurofootballfives.com debut so we would soon get our first glimpses of them in action. Naranjitos were experienced in these tournaments though. They were making their fifth eurofootballfives.com appearance after 2 previous appearances at the Barcelona Fives, 1 at the Valencia Fives and 1 at the Budapest Fives.

It was a high quality contest and maybe that extra experience for Naranjitos paid dividends. It was the Spanish team who broke the deadlock thanks to a Mario Alvarez strike. Darren Harrington hit back for Smithfields OAPs to make it 1-1 but his goal could not prevent his team slipping to defeat.

It was Naranjitos who would have the final say in the goal-scoring stakes as Adrian Rodriguez Ortega produced the winner. Final score, 2-1.

The final fixture in the opening round of Group A was an all English encounter between Mavericks and Leek High Boys. As with the game on Pitch C this was a team on debut against a team with prior eurofootballfives.com experience.

It was Mavericks who had previous experience in our tournaments having played at the 2015 Algarve Open and going all the way to the Plate Final on that occasion.

The two teams were quite closely matched and in the final shake-up there would be just the one goal to separate the two teams. The match-winner would be Richard Law who scored the only goal of the game which would earn Leek High Boys a 1-0 win.