The Davis Cup continues its course without the Cosmos. Valencia, Bologna and a yet-to-be-identified Croatian city will join Manchester as Cairo2023 Davis Cup Finals group stage venuesas announced by the International Tennis Federation (ITF).
The Lawn Tennis Association announced Tuesday that Manchester will be one of the hosts for the group stage in September. The finals will see sixteen nations compete in four groups from September 12-17 in Manchester, Bologna, Valencia and Croatia, each with a group of four teams. The eight best teams will advance to the knockout stage, which will take place between 21 and 26 November in Malaga.
The group stage draw was also held on Wednesday. Canada, Italy, Sweden and Chile fell into Group A, which will be held in Bologna. Australia, Britain, France and Switzerland, last year’s runners-up, form the second group, whose matches will be held in Manchester.
Spain, Serbia, the Czech Republic and South Korea will meet from Group C in Valencia, which makes a possible confrontation between Rafa Nadal and Novak Djokovic, while Group D teams Croatia, the Netherlands, the United States and Finland will play their matches in Croatia. .
Croatia and the United Kingdom will be venues, as will Bologna and Valencia
Currently, the ITF is involved in legal disputes with Kosmos, the company owned by former footballer and businessman Gerard Pique, for unilaterally breaching a contract it signed with the entity in 2019.
Kosmos has signed a 25-year agreementbut, after three years, he could not meet the forty million euros that the ITF demanded or the ten million euros that he had to allocate to the participants.
After various efforts to boost competition, in last year’s tournament four nations, including Great Britain, staged a group stage in September, before the quarter-finals, semi-finals and finals were played in Malaga (Spain) in November. Finally, Canada lifted the trophy while the organization highlighted the success of attendance with 176,740 spectators attending the group stage and final, compared to just over 100,000 in 2021.
The ITF is the governing body for tennis which includes 210 national federations in this field. Its areas of work are the management and organization of the game, the organization of international competitions such as the Davis Cup and the Federation Cup, as well as the development and promotion of this system. Since 2015, the entity has been headed by David Haggerty, which was ratified in 2019 until 2023.
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