By Doug Reed @DougReedFutsal

The vision for the Mini Club World Cup in Kuwait was to create a world class futsal event. For that world class clubs were required. This responsibility fell on the shoulders of Ivan Codina, Senior Account Manager at Red Card Sport Agency.

Ten of the participating teams were recruited by Red Card through Codina. With a high level of futsal on show during the tournament his assignment has been completed to satisfaction. He has been present at all the games and describing the level of play he said “We were expecting good teams to take part in the tournament and see a good level but the truth is, in the end, every single team has been playing very good futsal. Most of the teams have incorporated some extra players to improve their quality. So I think that was a great surprise for everyone.”

Codina, from Spain, possesses degrees in Sports Management and Business Administration and worked for FC Barcelona in the management of the club. Further he worked at the 2010 Youth Olympics in Singapore, where he now resides, and many other sports tournaments. Through his role recruiting teams, the organisers got to know him and asked him to take a consultancy role to provide advice on the organisational side. He has been impressed with the organisation of the tournament, commenting “to be the first year of such a tournament, with so many teams, in this country where they don’t have previous experience of organising such events, I think it has been really good. There is always room for improvement, that’s for sure, but so far I think it has been really good and I hope it has been a great experience for everyone.”

He was also a professional ice hockey player before retiring, detailing his playing career he said ”I was a professional ice hockey player in Spain. I know it sounds a bit weird. I played for a couple of clubs in Spain, mainly for FC Barcelona. I was captain of the Spanish National Team and played in 9 World Cups.” With this his first experience of futsal he quickly noticed the similarities with his own sport observing “it is not as fast as ice hockey, of course, but when you play with superiority (fly goalkeeper) this reminds me a lot of the power play in ice hockey, and also how they pressure on the ball. Even for the goalkeeper I think it has similarities with the goalkeeper in ice hockey.”

During his later years at FC Barcelona he combined playing with coaching. The similarities between ice hockey and futsal plus his background as a player and coach lead to Chonburi trainer and fellow countryman, Pulpis, asking for his opinions. Talking of this Codina said I was talking with Pulpis the other day and we were talking about my background and he actually asked me for some different drills that we do with the power play in ice hockey and the defensive pressure to see if they could be applied for futsal.”

After working in the management of FC Barcelona he was appointed Co-ordinator for the youth teams of the club. He then decided for a change of career and moved to the international gym company David Lloyd’s to work in marketing and sales. His work overseas at the Youth Olympics in Singapore would result in him to permanently move to the city to take a position at a sports marketing agency. After this he moved to his current position in Red Card. As a marketing expert he noted that ”There is definitely a lot of room for improvement (in marketing the tournament). I don’t think they have done much; Maybe locally they have a done a little bit. We are talking about a world cup for clubs. That means it can be marketed to many different countries. We all know futsal has a lot of followers in a lot of countries around the world. Definitely they should do something because without doing anything I think it has reached almost everywhere.”

Looking to the future and the next edition of the tournament he identified the rules and refereeing as areas that can be improved saying “If we are talking about a FIFA tournament, it would be great if the exact rules of FIFA apply for the tournament in terms of like the length of the games… which I don’t think is going to be a problem.” On the refereeing he said “I don’t like to blame the referees, I think they try their best. I think they have done a good job so far but I think if you are talking about bringing the best club teams of the world to this tournament then you also have to probably bring the best referees……it gives more prestige, people respect them more and they have experience. That is the only reason. These are some of the small things that can be improved.”

He has already begun discussions with the organisers about the next edition and his involvement, with both parties happy with their partnership this year. These discussions involved the subject of next year’s participants. On this topic Codina revealed ”I know that they, the organisers, are interested in bringing some of the teams that are taking part this year. Obviously there is going to be new teams coming, that’s for sure. In fact the objective is to bring the best teams of the world. I think right now we have brought very good teams but there is still room for bringing better teams, top teams.” If you wish to keep up to date with the latest updates on next year’s edition then stay tuned to FutsalPlanet, the world leader in global futsal news.









Posted by Doug Reed --> info@futsalplanet.com