Elite Cup 2023 – Football, food and fun

Every year, the favor­ite foot­ball tour­nament of the Elite Net­work brings to­gether mem­bers from all pro­grams with­in the net­work to claim the most pres­tigious prize of the net­work, the Elite Cup. The 2023 edi­tion took place in Mu­nich, where sunny weather al­lowed to enjoy a day full of foot­ball, food and fun. 12 teams fought for the glory, but only one could final­ly reach it. Who were the lucky ones?

In that sweet spot of the year, in which the sum­mer has al­ready ar­rived, but the ex­ams have not, stu­dents and facul­ty from the Elite Net­work en­joyed all to­gether a sunny and re­laxed Sat­urday in which, re­gard­less if one played foot­ball or not, fun was en­sured.

In this year edi­tion 11 pro­grams brought their teams and sup­por­ters to the event: Alongside this year’s hosts and title de­fend­ers, the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “The­oreti­cal and Mathemat­ical Phys­ics”(TMP), the Elite Grad­uate Pro­grams “Ad­vanced Op­tical Tech­nolo­gies” (MAOT), “Honors – Busi­ness, Eco­nom­ics and In­for­mation Sys­tems”, “In­te­grated Im­munology”, “Ba­varian Grad­uate School of Com­puta­tional Engi­neer­ing” (BGCE), “Honors De­gree in Tech­nolo­gy Man­age­ment” (CDTM), “Hu­man Biol­ogy”, “Neu­roen­gi­neer­ing”, “Global Change Ecol­ogy” (GCE), “Ad­vanced Sig­nal Pro­cess­ing and Communi­cation Engi­neer­ing” (ASC) took part in the tour­nament. Fur­ther­more the Max-Weber-Program also par­tici­pated with a team. The nov­elty of this year was the “All Stars Elitenetzwerk”, a team who em­braced the spirit of the event and put to­gether eve­ry­body who want­ed to play, have fun and meet new peo­ple.

After a wel­come from the or­gan­izers of this year, the Theo­reti­cal and Mathemat­ical Phys­ics Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram, the ball start­ed run­ning at 10:30 o’clock. In the morn­ing the group stage took place. Dis­tributed in three groups of four teams, this first ses­sion was a non-stop foot­ball party full of emo­tions and nerves, where the most popu­lar spot was the whiteboard with the clas­sifi­cati­on. By lunchtime, the four teams that would con­test the knockout phase in the after­noon had been de­cided.

After re­charging bat­teries with a well de­served lunch, the final knockout phase start­ed. Local TMP and CDTM played the first semi­final, reviv­ing last year’s final. The hosts man­aged to se­cure an­other win and a chance to de­fend the title. On the other match up, the Hon­ors pro­gram from Re­gens­burg fin­ished with the dream of the All Stars team. While these matches were defin­itive­ly excit­ing, no­body want­ed to stop play­ing, and it was pos­sible to set some friendly matches be­tween the teams elim­inated in the group stage, so eve­ry­body could keep play­ing.

In the match for the third posi­tion, the novel All Stars man­aged to reach a po­dium posi­tion in one of the sur­prises of the tour­nament. This was just the prel­ude for the mo­ment eve­ry­body was wait­ing for, the great final be­tween title de­fend­er TMP and the Elite Grad­uate Pro­gram “Honors – Busi­ness, Eco­nom­ics and In­for­mation Sys­tems” from Re­gens­burg. In a match in which both teams played un­til ex­haus­tion, Hon­ors man­aged to rise to the victo­ry in penal­ties helped by their vig­orous sup­por­ters.

From here, con­gratu­la­tions once more to the Hon­ors team, who will host next year’s Elite Cup. The TMP mem­bers see you all next year in Re­gens­burg.

Text: Juan Manuel Cano Vila, student of the Elite Graduate Programm "Theoretical and Mathematical Physics"