Voting has now finished.
Pavel Chadim (CZE):
The 2022 EBCA Coach of the Year is again a candidate. He received the honor after leading a homegrown Czech squad to the 2023 WBC final. The mostly amateur squad absolutely held its own against the world´s most renowned baseball countries, playing powerhouse Australia (3-8), Japan (2-10) and Korea (3-7) “tough as nails”
But those games could be seen as an encore, after beating China 8-5 in the first game of pool play, which meant the European Cinderella story continued. After pool play Czech placed fourth ahead of China, meaning it had directly qualifed for the next main tournament. With having to go through another Qualifier, Czech Baseball can already plan for the next edition of the WBC, which will most likely be played in 2027.
Nelson Prada (ESP):
Those following European Baseball for the last decades grew very accustomed to seeing the fight for the gold medal being a contest between Netherlands and Italy. Bronze was usually decided within a group of countries that could have been labeled as “the second tier” – with Spain at the forefront, but also including Great Britain and pro-infused Israel, to name the most recent.
Not this year! After finishing second in 2016, third in 2019 and fourth in 2021, Spain finally was able to go all the way, overcoming the reigning champions Netherlands in the semis and hence denying the Dutch a fifth straight title.
Leading the talented squad to its success was manager Nelson Prada, who was at the helm for his second EuroBaseball tournament. After two lop-sided victories to start the competition, Spain made a statement by beating the talented Czech team 9-0, winning it´s pool. After a 18-3 drubbing of Sweden in the quarterfinals, another matchup with the Dutch loomed.
Overcoming the Netherlands with 4 unanswered runs in the 8th and 9th innings was already impressive, which Prada´s team followed up by blowing away a loaded Team GB in the final by a score of 11-2.
Lahcène Benhamida (FRA):
A former French national team player himself, Benhamida is now leading the development of the Women´s Baseball National Team. In 2022 he led the female French squad team to a second consecutive European Title and securing the only European entry in the 2023 Women´s Baseball World Cup. In the split tournament with 2 pools of 6 teams, France went up against world number 1 Japan, Chinese Taipeh as well as three american entries from Venezuela, Puerto Rico and Cuba. France did not manage to qualify for the final round to be played in 2024, but sported the second-best hitter (by batting average with .545) and seems poised to continue inching closer to the most elite women´s baseball teams in the world – all of which have a longer history in this discipline.
Currently, France is listed as the world´s number 14 – easily beating out all other European countries.
