Thursday | 09 Jun 2016

WRC friendly kick- starts Euro 2016

An all-star squad of drivers from this week's Rally Italia Sardegna put their soccer skills to the test at an unusual football friendly on Wednesday afternoon.

Tweny-four hours before the rally's opening stage, Hyundai hosted the super-sized table football game outside its Alghero service base to mark its sponsorship of the UEFA Euro 2016 event which gets underway in France this Friday.
 
Team loyalties were set aside as drivers settled into a mixed formation with Jari-Matti Latvala and Martin Prokop in goal. Facing them were striker duos of Mads Østberg / Thierry Neuville and Sébastien Ogier / Dani Sordo.

Scrapping in the midfield were Hayden Paddon, Kevin Abbring, Andreas Mikkelsen, Eric Camilli, Ott Tanak and Henning Solberg.

The final score was 8-5 and wrc.com's man of the match award went to Neuville who bagged four goals for the winning side. 

"It's a good start, but I want to be man of the rally, not man of the match," he told wrc.com. "But if we can continue like this it will be good fun out there. I had a good partnership with Mads here but I expect it will be a different story on the stages."

Full match video coverage, in 360˚ format, is available on Hyundai's Facebook page.

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