Two years ago, at the same stage of the inaugural finals week in Madrid, Britain defeated Germany before losing a close match to eventual champions Spain. Here, the United Kingdom and Germany have had the displeasure of playing behind closed doors in Innsbruck and will compete on Tuesday to return to the Spanish capital for the tournament's culmination this weekend.
For more than a decade, Leon Smith has led the British team, keeping many of the same backroom team in place, and they have welcomed the task of establishing their own culture. "I can tell you I absolutely love the guys here," said Smith. "It's not just the players and myself. The support team is just absolutely brilliant. You couldn't ask for, not just a nicer bunch of people, but everyone goes the extra mile. I won't name them, they'll get embarrassed, but they do everything for us. They do it with a smile on their face. Everyone feels part of it. We're in the team room in the evening. We're lucky we have different stuff to be doing, games. We spend time because we enjoy each other's company. It's been like that for a long time. Long may it continue."
Germany captain Michael Kohlmann said: "Now we have our chance to get revenge against Great Britain. I think Great Britain has a great team. We practiced with them here in the preparation. Leon is a great guy. I'm really looking forward to the tie. We have a chance to get to the semi-finals. That's our goal. But it's nice to play twice against them in the quarter-finals, so we can see whether we improve or not."
Cameron Norrie and Dan Evans are ranked 12 and 25 in the world, respectively, compared to Jan-Lennard Struff and Dominik Koepfer, who is ranked 51 and 54.