Welcome to Riga, the first ever edition of the Riga Tournament and our debut tournament in the Baltics. Our 5-a-side tournament saw us 24-teams assembled from England, France, Latvia and Lithuania and many other nationalities contained within those teams.

First up in Group A was L'Albiceleste (Fra) versus CAP FC (Eng).

L'Albiceleste arrive in Riga as the only team in the draw to previously win a eurofootballfives.com competition. Under the name of Grant Thornton they won the 2013 Mallorca Fives.

The team from Paris made their debut at the 2012 Budapest Fives winning their 6-team group without defeat before a Cup Quarter-Final exit to Hungary's Budapest Celtic Lions, 1-0. For their second tournament in Valencia they secured sponsorship and a name change to Grant Thornton. They also topped their group and won their Cup Quarter-Final 3-1 versus Team Extreme before a 1-0 defeat to Ireland's Mestallaban in the Semi-Final. Then came Mallorca glory in 2013 after 6 wins and 1 draw in 7 games.

At the 2014 Berlin Fives they were on the glory trail again with 4 wins in 4 games in the group phase. They then suffered a 4-1 defeat to Multiple Scoregasms in the Semi-Final. After a brief hiatus in 2015 they return to action in Riga 2016.

Their opponents CAP FC were on debut and t his was certainly going to be a tough opening test but one that didn't seem to faze them at all as two Graham Williams goals and one from Patrick Townson sent them on their way to victory. They must have though this eurofootballfives.com lark was easy!

L'Albiceleste were amongst the pre-tournament favourites so this was quite some scalp. Fateh Bekhouche scored their consolation goal in a 3-1 defeat.

The final fixture in the opening round of Group A was FC Shark versus DHFC.

FC Sharks (Eng) began life in eurofootballfives.com action at the 2015 Barcelona Fives. They began with a 3-3 draw against Spain's FC Prospe before defeats to Freshers FC (4-0), the eventual champions Club Esportiu Llefia (3-2) and finished with a 1-1 draw against FC Atwood. They qualified for the Trophy and defeated Carazur 3-2 in the Quarter-Finals. They exited at the Semi-Final stage following a 3-0 defeat to Equipo De Cristhian.

DHFC also had previous eurofootballfives.com tournament experience (more on that later). The two teams looked evenly matched for most of the half with the scores locked at 0-0. However, a devastating spell of 3 goals in 2 minutes before the break put DHFC in the ascendency. Ben Charles-Williams, Andrew Mobbs and Charlie Wade all found the back of the net.

After the break, FC Sharks pulled a goal back through Chris Breen to reduce the deficit to 3-1. That goal spree before the turnaround proved to be the key spell in the game as DHFC ran out 3-1 winners.