Eight teams left in contention for ebt Finals 2025 titles

The women’s competition saw a highly competitive race to the medal round, with no quarter-finals decided in straight sets and most of the favourites already knocked out as the tournament arrives at the semi-final stage. The semi-finalists are Niterói Rugby FC, CATS A.M. Team Almeria, Kanonierky and BHC Zagreb.

Escola de Formação de Espinho - Os Tigres have the chance to defend their 2024 title in the men’s competition, and are joined in the semi-finals by 12 Monkeys Köln BHC, BHC Zagreb and Aarhus Beach. Both Köln and Aarhus are hoping for their first trophy while Zagreb target a return to the podium after an eight-year wait.

Women’s competition

• Almeria will play Kanonierky in the first semi-final on Sunday morning, while Niterói will play Zagreb in the second; the medal matches will take place at the end of the day
• Irish side Niterói are the only semi-finalists from the ebt Finals 2024 who will play for the medals again, while the title winners from last year, Spanish side Fundación Fomento y Deporte CBMP Ciudad de Málaga, were knocked out in the group phase
• Almeria are the only semi-finalists to have won any trophy before — they took the ebt title in 2021 and reached the final in 2023; they were also the runners-up at the Beach Handball Champions Cup in 2024 and claimed that title in 2019
• the runners-up of the ebt Finals 2024, Portuguese club AD IASPORTS, and the current title holders in the Champions Cup, The Danish Beachhandball Dream, were both eliminated in the quarter-finals on Saturday afternoon
• all four quarter-finals required shootouts to find the winners: Slovakian team Kanonierky beat IASPORTS, Croatian side Zagreb defeated CAIPIranhas Bartenbach, Spanish club Almeria won against The Danish Beachhandball Dream and Niterói beat Westsite Amsterdam
• The Danish Beachhandball Dream and Westsite Amsterdam topped their respective tables at the end of the group phase, with the Danish side the winners of a highly competitive group A while Amsterdam, coming from group B, were the only team to arrive at the quarter-finals with a perfect record of wins
• the four quarter-finalists from group A — The Danish Beachhandball Dream, Zagreb, IASPORTS and Niterói — all finished on eight points with the exact same results of four wins and two losses
• it was from group A that 2024 title winners Ciudad de Málaga and three-time ebt finalists Multichem Szentendrei NKE were eliminated
• also in group A, Italian side Handball Erice were the only team not to earn any points in the group phase; all teams in group B took at least one win
• the three top scorers of the competition have been knocked out: Bartenbach’s Pauline Borrmann scored 119 points, Multichem’s Lili Uhrin scored 96 and London GD’s Sofia Goncalves scored 93

Men's competition

• in the semi-finals on Sunday, German team Köln will meet Portuguese club Tigres and Croatian side Zagreb will take on Danish team Aarhus
• neither Köln nor Aarhus have won any international title before, while Zagreb have taken the ebt trophy three times and won the Champions Cup in 2018; Tigres celebrated first at the ebt Finals 2024 and were runners-up in the Champions Cup in 2023
• Aarhus are the only team across both competitions to have won every single set played — they topped group B with a perfect record and beat Spanish team Fundación Fomento Deporte CBMP Ciudad de Málaga 2:0 in the quarter-finals
• in a tight quarter-final decided with a thrilling shootout, Köln BHC prevented Niterói from repeating their achievement last year, when both the men’s and women’s teams representing the Irish club took third place
• Zagreb continue the quest for their first title in the competition since 2017 and their seventh final after a 2:0 win in the quarter-final against 2024 Champions Cup winners GRD Leça – Spar from Portugal
• Köln finished the group phase on top of group A, with five wins and only one loss, to two-time Champions Cup winners Ciudad de Málaga; Zagreb were second on the table with the same number of points, having only lost to Köln
• the quarter-final between Hungarian team SC Squadra Buda and Tigres also went to a shootout, with Tigres coming out on top after a narrow win in the first set and clearer victory in the shootout
• three of the four men’s semi-finalists came from group A, and every team in the men’s competition took at least one win
• the top scorers ahead of the final day in Trapani are Köln’s Lennart Wörmann, with 119 points, followed by Aarhus’s Jakob Merrild — the top scorer of the Champions Cup 2024 — with 108 and Zagreb’s Lucian Bura with 107

Photos © Joe Pappalardo