Ladies and gentlemen, dear athletes and volleyball fans,
The end phase of the 2006 men's Junior European Championship is approaching with the Final Round taking place in Kazan (RUS) from 6 th to 14 th September 2006 . Defending champion and Final Round host Russia and the three next best ranked teams of the 2004 edition, i.e. runner-up Netherlands , bronze medallist Germany and fourth placed Serbia Montenegro, have already qualified for the Final Round, the stepping stone for many hopeful U20 athletes into a future international career.
The favourites are prepared to confront the eight challengers coming from the four Qualification Tournaments, of which two will be decided in Alassio (ITA) between host Italy, Austria, Belarus, Latvia, Switzerland the Ukraine. Finishing eighth in 2004, thus missing out on automatically qualifying for the Final Round 2006 by four places, the Italian home team will be the one to watch out for in Alassio.
On behalf of the members of the CEV Board of Administration, I would like to forward many greetings to the Volleyball Federation of Italy. The volleyball family can be very proud of this organisation as it shows the importance of high-level events and first-class competition for the future of European volleyball.
For this reason I would like to thank the organisers as well as the economic, sports and political authorities for their respective involvement and the perfect organisation of the competition.
A lot of success to all participating teams!
Yours faithfully,
Mr. André Meyer
CEV President
