As the 2023 Mallorca Veterans Tournament Cup Quarter-Finals were about to get underway we were down to the elite 8 teams in the tournament. There was a particularly strong international challenge with 6 national teams from England, France, Hungary, Moldova, Poland and Spain.

We began with the mouthwatering prospect of Duktil Balear versus FC Mahou – a match that could quite easily have been the Cup Final today. Duktil Balear had earned quite the reputation from Group A and they were up against 2x Veterans champions FC Mahou who were gunning for a third Veterans title and a fifth eurofootballfives.com title in total.

The two teams served us to a real treat of a game and the victor of this could well be the outright favourites for the tournament. Duktil Balear continued their fine form with Javier Martinez Leon giving the Spanish the lead and it was a lead they held until half-time.

FC Mahou were arguably not at their best today with a 2-1 defeat to AFC Blue Boys and 1-1 draw with Ruta Uno FC but in the big game here they were back into beast mode. As if to typify this Mike Brandon who was top scorer at the 2013 Algarve Open, 2018 Algarve Veterans Tournament, 2019 Alicante Tournament and 2022 Lisbon Veterans Tournament had only scored 3 today. Fine by mere mortal standards but less than he was accustomed to. He turned it up a notch here. He equalized for 1-1 but FC Mahou then saw Duktil Balear score through David Soler Hibernon – his 10 th of the tournament and currently top of today's scoring charts. Daniel Suarez Rordan extended the lead to 3-1 and the game looked done. Mike Brandon and FC Mahou had other ideas. First of all he scored to reduce the deficit to 3-2 and then completed his hat-trick for 3-3 and earn a penalty shoot-out for his team.

FC Mahou won the 2022 Lisbon Veterans Tournament on penalties but the shoot-out was to be their undoing here in Mallorca. Mike Brandon and Matt Nicholls were on target with pens 1 & 3 but Mark Watkins and Steve Sachro missed with pens 2 & 4. Meanwhile Duktil Balear were 100% spot on with their spot kicks and they were through to the Semi-Finals. The defending champions were out.

Quarter-Final three saw AFC Blue Boys (Pol) take on Les 5 Salopards (Fra). AFC Blue Boys had been hugely impressive this morning en route to winning Group B. They had a 100% record scoring 17 goals and conceding just 3. It was their best group performance in our tournaments which was even more outstanding as it included a 2-1 win from behind against the pre-tournament favourites FC Mahou.

Les 5 Salopards lost to FC Mahou at the Cup Semi-Final stage of last year's Lisbon Veterans Tournament so they knew they would have to be at their best if they wanted to reach that same stage here in Mallorca. The French team had been perfect in their opening 3 games winning all 3 before losing their final game to an impressive Duktil Balear side.

This was a closely fought contest which saw just one goal in the first half. It was a Marcin Zaluga strike for AFC Blue Boys that separated the two teams at the break. Les 5 Salopards had reached the Cup Semi-Finals on both their previous eurofootballfives.com appearances but their chances of reaching a third was dealt a blow when Krystian Waledziak fired home for 2-0.

There was still time for Les 5 Salopards to recover and they pulled a goal back through Habri – his third of the tournament. Ultimately though AFC Blue Boys had enough in the tank to protect their lead and it was the Polish team who would progress.

The tournament was over for Les 5 Salopards – for today at least. We hope to see them next time in their quest for Veterans glory.

The final Quarter-Final was World Pinteur Mature (Fra) versus FC Poloboc (Mda). With Les 5 Salopards falling on Pitch C, World Pinteur Mature were France's last hope for glory in the Veterans draw.

The French team had been extraordinary in Group D with a remarkable consistency as they won their games 4-0, 4-0, 4-1 and 4-1. They were bidding to reach the Cup Semi-Finals for the second time in as many Veterans tournaments but their task would not be easy against FC Poloboc.

The Moldovan side were on debut but were very impressive in Group C. They produced 3 wins out of 3 before meeting FC Miracle and securing a draw against the 2017 Lisbon Veterans champions.

With the game underway we saw two evenly matched teams and it was going to be very hard to pick a winner. At half-time we were no closer to finding out which team would progress as we changed ends level at 0-0. The deadlock was broken in the second period when Sergiu Darii struck for FC Poloboc. At full-time the teams could still not be separated though as Alexandre Braud equalized for World Pinteur.

A penalty shoot-out would be needed to decide this one but the omens would not be good for World Pinteur who had lost all 3 of their penalty shoot-outs in our tournaments – the 2016 Lisbon Tournament Cup Final, 2019 Budapest Fives Plate Quarter-Finals and the 2019 Budapest Veterans Cup Semi-Finals. What makes this record worse is that they failed to score in 2 of those 3 shoot-outs losing these 2-0, 2-1 and 1-0.

That obviously made FC Poloboc strong favourites and so it proved. The curse continued for World Pinteur who saw Kevin Payet, Adrien Maurel and Marc Gouadon all miss. FC Poloboc scored 3 of their 4 penalties and went through 3-0.

All was not over for World Pinteur as they had their Open Age campaign still ongoing.

Veterans

(For Open Age, click introduction and then select the relevant Open Age section)