The first edition of the Futsal Net Stars Challenge Cup will be held between Friday and Sunday at the new Qormi Football Club synthetic ground.

The main objective behind this tournament is to attract new 5-a-side teams to participate in the coming MFA Futsal competition. During the past months Futsal in Malta gained a lot of popularity particularly thanks to a new reality show on Maltese television, Net Stars. This programme features the daily journal of a 5-a-side third division team competing in the MFA Futsal competition.

Currently almost all MFA Futsal leagues in Malta are over and the teams are preparing for the last competition of this season – the Knock-Out Competition.

The production team of Net Stars thought of organising a 5-a-side tournament which will specifically help Futsal teams to keep in form during the short break between the league and the knock-out competition.

A mixture of teams will be participating in this tournament. In all, there will be 13 teams taking part, with six teams playing in group A and seven teams playing in group B. Four teams will be initially seeded.

The organising team, Net Stars will be having their two squads playing in both groups – Net Stars Whites and Net Stars Greens. The other two seeded teams are the Maltese Futsal champions, Serbia, and MFA 1st division Futsal team, Swing Kids.

The other remaining nine teams will be drawn in the two groups. These are Caracas (non-Futsal), Cool Stars (non-Futsal), AJR Dolceria Italiana (MFA 1st Division), Ekoms (non-Futsal), Handyman Centre (MFA 2nd Division), Korol (MFA 3rd Division), Qormi Amateurs (non-Futsal), Raw Blas Juniors (non-Futsal) and Sant Iermu (non-Futsal).

All matches will be played at Qormi FC synthetic ground. On Friday the matches will commence at 8.30pm, on Saturday at 2pm and on the last day of the tournament, Sunday, mathces will start at 9am.

All matches in the first stage will be played on a round-robin basis and than the first two teams in both groups will qualify for the semi-final. Admission for this weekend-tournament is free and supporters of all participating teams are invited to attend.

The latest results and news regarding the tournament will be on-line when visiting www.maltarightnow.com and screened on Net Television during the weekend of the tournament.

Moreover Net Stars Reality Show will be presenting daily round-up features starting from Monday 18th April on Net Television. A special programme featuring the tournament will also be produced on Tuesday 19th April at 8.30pm

N.B. Net Stars Reality Show is broadcasted daily at 3.50pm and 7.30pm, with a special programme every Tuesday night at 8.30pm on Net Television.