The club GTK Gliwice decided to withdraw for the last game of the Alpe Adria Cup regular season, which should have been played in Pardubice today. As the first team in leagues history, the team from Poland wasn’t able to play their regular season games in the defined period, which originally ended on December 31.

The whole schedule for the regular season was set at the general assembly in September, but GTK Gliwice cancelled two games on short notice – one of them on gameday! The club was not able to find new dates with the teams from Klosterneuburg and Skrljevo for these games, even though AAC extended the deadline for group stage games until January 15.

The one and only possible board decision was to count the games with a result of 0:20.

Alpe Adria Cup was found as a “gentlemen league” nearly five years ago. The board invested a lot of voluntary hours into this project – to help clubs based in the middle-european region playing on a high international level by basically no costs. There are not many rules and guidelines. Alpe Adria Cup finished four seasons without any incidents like this, which proves the great acceptance of the concept of this “gentlemen league” by all participants.

The decision of GTK Gliwice to withdraw for the last game, because they do not have the possibility to finish Group A first or second, is a disappointment and a big setback for the whole spirit of Alpe Adria Cup.