Salou. Costa Dorada. 30 June 2021.
Salou will host this weekend, from July 2 to 4, a massive soccer tournament, the first to be held after the forced interruption due to Covid19.The Mare Nostrum ESEI Cup will be held at the facilities of the Salou Futbol Complex and will be held simultaneously in four fields in the modalities of soccer 11 and soccer 7. 32 male teams between 8 and 16 years old from the youngest and youngest categories will participate in the tournament. (soccer 11) and children and cadet (soccer 7).
In total, almost a thousand people including players, coaches and technical teams, family members and companions. Of this group, about 700 participants will stay in hotels in Salou. Majority teams from the Basque Country, Madrid and Catalonia participate in the tournament, part of which are soccer teams from nearby municipalities such as Montblanc, L'Aldea or Salou.
For Albert Viñas, organizer and manager of the Mare Nostrum Cup, this tournament, although modest in terms of the number of registrants, is a first step in the right direction after the forced stop due to Covid19. In addition to this tournament, Viñas said , is already working on two more competitions for next fall. In any case, the great challenge will be to return to the Mare Nostrum Cup tournament that is traditionally held at Easter and that attracts around 7,000 people. Viñas recalled that last year, 2020, due to the pandemic, the tournament had to be suspended when there were already some 7,000 people registered, but reported that a large number of teams have already shown interest in participating in Easter 2022. There are about 2,000 potential registrations, which suggests a good recovery for Easter 2022.
For his part, Pere Granados, mayor of Salou and president of the Municipal Tourist Board, congratulated the organizers for the resumption and highlighted the capacity of Salou as a municipality with experience, knowledge and organizational capacity to host all kinds of sporting events , including the Mare Nostrum Cup.
The tournament will start on Friday the 2nd with the arrival of players and companions and during Saturday the 3rd and Sunday the 4th the matches will be played. On the last day, Sunday 4, the awards ceremony will also take place. Access to the soccer fields will be guaranteed for family members, with two tickets for each player, although during the competition all restrictions and sanitary and security measures dictated by Covid19 will be followed.
