www.futsalplanet.com

Futsal Planet today celebrates its 16th birthday.

It was on this day in 1997 that founder Mico Martic first put the website online with the aim of providing an online portal that would provide the latest futsal news and information for futsal fans across the world.

This would connect together two rapidly growing trends; the internet and futsal.

In 1997 the internet was still in its infancy with fewer than 2% of the world population being users. Now that figure is over 40%.

Google was still an unregistered domain name, Netscape was still a more popular browser than Internet Explorer, CD-RW drives and media were just being introduced, and connecting to the internet still required hearing that memorable dialling tone.

During the same period futsal has also grown rapidly. In 1997 only three FIFA World Cups had been staged which saw Brazil victorious in all three. In the 1996 event only 49 nations participated to make the 16 final places compared to the 115 that entered the 2012 edition for the 24 places available.

Fans were still being thrilled by the spectacular abilities of legends such as Manoel Tobias, Kostantin Eremenko and Paulo Roberto, who were still in their prime. Future world star Falcao was just 19 years old and yet to make the 1st of his over 200 appearences he has since made for the Selecao.

16 years on FutsalPlanet's objective remains the same: to provide the worldwide futsal community with all the latest futsal developments and events, using the internet to achieve this aim.