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Logo of the Mosconi Cup

The Mosconi Cup is an annual nine-ball pool tournament contested between teams representing Europe and the United States since 1994. The trophy is named after American player Willie Mosconi, and has been compared to the Ryder Cup in golf.^[1]

Team USA beat Team Europe 11–9 on 7 December 2018. Both Europe and USA have won the tournament each 12 times, and they tied once. By winning in 2018 Team USA won the tournament for the first time since they last prevailed in 2009.

Player selection

In its earliest days, the Mosconi Cup was created by Sky Sports and Matchroom Sport as an exhibition event to increase public awareness of pool in the United Kingdom. In the first year of competition some of the WPBA's top players played alongside the men in their respective teams. These included Franziska Stark from Germany, Allison Fisher from England, Jeanette Lee and Vivian Villarreal from the United States.

As time progressed, the event evolved from its exhibition nature into a much more serious and professional tournament, and earning a place in the event has acquired a great deal of prestige.^{[citation needed]} In early runnings of the event, many famous snooker players participated, but only Steve Davis continued into the event's more serious era, bowing out when the event began to clash with snooker's UK Championship (at which he appeared as both a player and a BBC commentator).

After Davis' withdrawal, all players had to earn an invitation through their performances at other events, meaning that no more snooker players appeared until 2007, when Tony Drago earned a place by virtue of his performance on the European Pool Tour, and won the tournament's Most Valuable Player award for his unbeaten run in the singles matches.

Player appearances

The players to have appeared in the Mosconi Cup:^[2]

European players Appearance Name Country P NP 17 0 Ralf Souquet  Germany 15 0 Mika Immonen  Finland 13 0 Niels Feijen  Netherlands 11 0 Steve Davis  England 8 1 Oliver Ortmann  Germany 8 0 Darren Appleton  England 8 0 Nick van den Berg  Netherlands 6 4 Marcus Chamat  Sweden 4 0 Karl Boyes  England 4 0 Steve Knight  England 3 0 Thomas Engert  Germany 3 0 Mark Gray  England 3 0 Thorsten Hohmann  Germany 3 0 Albin Ouschan  Austria 3 0 Jayson Shaw  Scotland 2 2 Alex Lely  Netherlands 2 0 Tony Drago  Malta 2 0 Nick Ekonomopoulos  Greece 2 0 Chris Melling  England 2 0 Ronnie O'Sullivan  England 2 0 Daryl Peach  England 2 0 Tom Storm  Sweden 2 0 Jimmy White  England 2 0 David Alcaide  Spain 1 0 Tommy Donlon [de]  Ireland 1 0 Vincent Facquet [de]  France 1 0 Allison Fisher  England 1 0 Alex Higgins  Northern Ireland 1 0 Raj Hundal  England 1 0 Lee Kendall  England 1 0 Imran Majid  England 1 0 Fabio Petroni  Italy 1 0 Andy Richardson  England 1 0 Franziska Stark  Germany 1 0 Konstantin Stepanov  Russia 1 0 Lee Tucker  England 1 0 Joshua Filler  Germany 1 0 Eklent Kaçi  Albania 1 0 Alexander Kazakis  Greece 0 7 Johan Ruijsink  Netherlands

American players Appearance Name State P NP 17 0 Johnny Archer  Georgia 14 0 Earl Strickland  North Carolina 12 0 Shane Van Boening  South Dakota 10 0 Rodney Morris  California 10 0 Corey Deuel  California 7 0 Jeremy Jones  Texas 5 1 Charlie Williams  South Korea1 5 0 Dennis Hatch  New York 4 4 Nick Varner  Kentucky 4 0 Mike Dechaine [de]  Maine 4 0 Skyler Woodward  Kentucky 3 1 Kim Davenport  Oklahoma 3 0 Justin Bergman [de]  Illinois 3 0 James Rempe  Pennsylvania 2 3 Mark Wilson  Missouri 2 0 Lou Butera  Pennsylvania 2 0 Michael Coltrain  North Carolina 2 0 Shannon Daulton  Kentucky 2 0 Mike Gulyassy  Ohio 2 0 Bobby Hunter  Michigan 2 0 Mike Massey  Tennessee 2 0 Reed Pierce  Mississippi 2 0 Shawn Putnam  Pennsylvania 2 0 Tony Robles  New York 2 0 John Schmidt  California 2 0 Dallas West  Illinois 2 0 Óscar Domínguez [de]  California 2 0 Billy Thorpe  Ohio 1 1 C.J. Wiley  Texas 1 0 Mike Davis  North Carolina 1 0 John DiToro  Florida 1 0 Paul Gerni  New Jersey[3] 1 0 Roger Griffis  Texas 1 0 Justin Hall [de]  Illinois 1 0 Danny Harriman  Maryland 1 0 Allen Hopkins  New Jersey 1 0 Jeanette Lee  New York 1 0 Gabe Owen [de]  Kansas 1 0 Brandon Shuff  Virginia 1 0 Vivian Villarreal  Texas 1 0 Tyler Styer  Wisconsin 0 2 Johan Ruijsink  Netherlands1 0 1 Buddy Hall  Illinois 1 Born outside the United States

Player representation

European nations

Players from sixteen nations have represented Europe. Sorted by number of different people, (number of appearances), and alphabetically, these are:

Number of players by country

15 (44)  England	6 (34)  Germany	4 (32)  Netherlands	2 (12)  Sweden
2 (3)  Greece	1 (15)  Finland	1 (3)  Austria	1 (3)  Scotland
1 (2)  Malta	1 (2)  Spain	1 (1)  Albania	1 (1)  France
1 (1)  Ireland	1 (1)  Italy	1 (1)  Northern Ireland	1 (1)  Russia

American states

Players from twenty-two states have represented the United States is twenty-two (Charlie Williams and Johan Ruijsink were both born outside of the US). Order as above, these are

Number of players by state

4 (24)  California	4 (11)  Texas	4 (7)  Illinois	3 (17)  North Carolina
3 (14)  Kentucky	3 (8)  New York	3 (7)  Pennsylvania	2 (4)  Ohio
2 (2)  New Jersey	1 (17)  Georgia	1 (12)  South Dakota	1 (5)  Missouri
1 (4)  Maine	1 (4)  Oklahoma	1 (2)  Michigan	1 (2)  Mississippi
1 (2)  Tennessee	1 (1)  Florida	1 (1)  Kansas	1 (1)  Maryland
1 (1)  Virginia	1 (1)  Wisconsin

Tournament modifications

There have been rule changes and format changes throughout the tournament's brief history. These include, but are not limited to: "Non-playing captain" roles were introduced in the 2003 event; however these were removed in the 2004 tournament. In 2004 the doubles matches were re-formatted to be scotch doubles. In 2005, a 30-second shot clock was introduced, and caused controversy due to timing malfunctions. The 2006 tournament started with a team-versus-team match followed by two trebles matches. That year also saw the reintroduction of the non-playing captain role.

The 2009 tournament included several new features:^[4]

• No pairing in the doubles matches could be repeated.


• The event included four blocks of consecutive matches, organized so that five slots were available for each side, in which every player was required to play exactly once.


• In two singles matches, each player was selected by the opposing team captain.

Results table

Year	Venue	Winners	Score	Losers	MVP	Ref
1994	Romford, London, England	USA	16–12	Europe		[5]
1995	Basildon, Essex, England	Europe	16–15	USA		[6]
1996	Dagenham, London, England	USA	15–13	Europe		[7]
1997	Bethnal Green, London, England	USA	13–8	Europe		[8]
1998	Bethnal Green, London, England	USA	13–9	Europe		[9]
1999	Bethnal Green, London, England	USA	12–7	Europe		[10]
2000	Bethnal Green, London, England	USA	12–9	Europe		[11]
2001	Bethnal Green, London, England	USA	12–1	Europe		[12]
2002	Bethnal Green, London, England	Europe	12–9	USA		[13]
2003	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	USA	11–9	Europe	Mika Immonen	[14][15]
2004	Egmond aan Zee, Netherlands	USA	12–9	Europe	Rodney Morris	[16][17]
2005	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	USA	11–6	Europe	Earl Strickland	[18][19]
2006	Rotterdam, Netherlands	Europe  USA	12–12	Tied	Corey Deuel	[20][21]
2007	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Europe	11–8	USA	Tony Drago	[22][23]
2008	St. Julian's, Malta	Europe	11–5	USA	Mika Immonen	[24][25]
2009	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	USA	11–7	Europe	Dennis Hatch	[26][27]
2010	Bethnal Green, London, England	Europe	11–8	USA	Darren Appleton	[28]
2011	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Europe	11–7	USA	Niels Feijen	[29][30]
2012	Bethnal Green, London, England	Europe	11–9	USA	Chris Melling	[31][32]
2013	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Europe	11–2	USA	Niels Feijen	[33][34]
2014	Tower Circus, Blackpool, England	Europe	11–5	USA	Niels Feijen	[35][36]
2015	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Europe	11–7	USA	Niels Feijen	[37]
2016	Alexandra Palace, London, England	Europe	11–3	USA	Albin Ouschan	[38]
2017	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA	Europe	11–4	USA	Joshua Filler	[39]
2018	Alexandra Palace, London, England	USA	11–9	Europe	Skyler Woodward	[40]
2019	Las Vegas, Nevada, USA

See also

• List of sports competitions between teams representing continents

References

External links

• Official website