At the 2011 Barcelona Fives we saw 4 home Spanish teams occupy all the Cup Semi-Final places. Here at the 2015 Bratislava Fives the Slovakian teams proved almost as successful with 3 of the 4 Semi-Final spaces. The A Team of France were the team fighting the tide of local dominance.

The first Cup Semi-Final was FC Pressburg versus The A Team. FC Pressburg came into the game with 4 wins and 1 draw and were looking good to reach the Cup Final for the first time. They had reached the Cup Semi-Finals in 2014 where they met CIS Committee of Belarus. The Belarus team won on that occasion 4-1 as they added the 2014 Bratislava Fives to their success at the 2014 Budapest Fives.

The A Team had 3 Semi-Finals in eurofootballfives.com history – 2 in the Plate they had lost (4-0 to Brioche at the 2014 Mallorca Tournament, 1-0 to FC Radbroke at the 2014 Budapest Fives) but crucially the one they had played in the Cup they had won 6-1 versus Vamos of Poland at the 2013 Krakow Trophy.

This was a game that The A Team took by the scruff of the neck from the kick-off and they effectively won the tie in the first half. DydyThey raced into a 4-1 lead as Dydynho and Fateh Bekhouche each scored twice. There was a goal for Adam Kovac who reached double figures with his 10 th goal. Like Matej Rapcan of Ziar Crew, Kovac now had reached 10 goals (or more) at both the 2014 and 2015 Bratislava Fives – a remarkable goal-scoring achievement.

Talking of remarkable goal-scoring achievements, Fateh Bekhouche went on to complete his hat-trick after the break. Then, Dydynho grabbed his fourth hat-trick of the tournament to seal another fine French performance. We'd need to check the records of our previous 64 tournaments but we are sure that 4 hat-tricks in one tournament is unprecedented. Tomas Macai's 6 th goal of the tournament provided scant consolation for FC Pressburg who were resigned to exiting the tournament. Final score, 6-2.

We'd like to offer our commiserations to FC Pressburg who had played superbly today but maybe this was one game too far. Third time lucky for a Cup Final next time?

The second Cup Semi-Final had a lot to live up to after the first. It would be contested by GSF Drunkerz and Fireball who would guarantee that Slovakia would have at least one representative in the Cup Final – the winners would be the first Slovakian team to compete in a eurofootballfives.com Cup Final.

GSF Drunkerz games usually carried a great atmosphere and they brought that to the party here. They showed a real resilience and determination to their play that brought them the Plate win back in September of last year. In normal time, they had won 1, drawn 2 and lost just once today but you felt they would just get the job done. Fireball had been more fluent and racked up the wins with 4 wins and 1 draw to date. At half-time the two teams were level in this one at 1-1 with goals from Martin Volek (GSF Drunkerz) and Vladimir Rezny (Fireball). It was their 6th and 4th goals of the day respectively.

Maybe it was no surprise GSF Drunkerz were level as their goals for tally was now 12 for the day with their goals against tally also at 12. If they could produce a positive tournament goal difference they would advance to the Cup Final and Dominik Carny's second of the day put them on course for such victory.

Fireball were looking at their first defeat of the day and GSF Drunkerz were spoiling a lot of team's parties. Ziar Crew had a 100% record when they met GSF Drunkerz – they went out. Fireball were unbeaten then they met GSF Drunkerz – they were now out too as the game finished 2-1.

GSF Drunkerz had reached their second eurofootballfives.com Final in two attempts – many congratulations to them. Our condolences to Fireball who had been superb today but just fell at the final hurdle.