Courtesy: Morning Star


Futsal Could Become A Popular Olympic Sport

August 2016 Wednesday 17TH

Looking at how much fun Rugby Sevens has been, KADEEM SIMMONDS sees a future for football’s smaller cousin

Premier League football is back. Not football as many have alluded to over the weekend, seemingly ignoring the non-league fixtures and the start of the Championship, League One and League Two a few weeks back.
Anyway, I digress. The start of the Premier League means the return of football podcasts. I find them extremely interesting as they often offer different perspectives on the weekend action and sometimes have very interesting debates around issues surrounding the game.

These debates can be quite often biased but can often spark a train of thought which leads to Simmonds Speaks (you have now seen behind the curtain, like in the Wizard of Oz).
There were no debates this week but on one particular podcast, the host said a Labour MP he follows on Twitter suggested having five-a-side football in the Olympics.

Now trying to find which Labour MP said this has so far proved impossible so I apologise for not giving that person credit, especially as the podcast host failed to name him.

Back to the topic at hand. Five-a-side football is played on astroturf in a cage and the rules are fairly simple. The ball never goes out of play unless the ball is played over head height or behind the goal. You can play the ball off the wall to yourself and there are no slide tackles. Players aren’t allowed in the area and goalkeepers aren’t allowed out.

The MP and host argued that Rugby Sevens had gone over really well with fans this summer and that a smaller version of football could have a similar impact.

Now the members of the podcast discussed this for a few minutes, joking about what it would be like to have five-a-side, a game stereotypically played by unfit office workers or people unfit to play 11-a-side, as an Olympic sport.

However, it is extremely unlikely that we will see a five-a-side become an Olympic sport. It has no governing body or professional status and is seen as a hobby. Technically it’s not even a sport, just a different type of football.

But it got me thinking. Why not play Futsal at the Games?
Futsal has been in the news recently as a group of ex-players, including Paul Scholes and Ryan Giggs, recently played in an Indian Premier League so it isn’t alien to people.

I represented my university, Brighton, in a national tournament. We didn’t win but it was an amazing experience and the game itself is a lot of fun, totally different to what I had experienced previously playing football.

One of the positive points made about playing five-a-side is that it would be a smaller drain on professional squads. Teams would lose about two players maximum, though that is pretty much the case now.

Most don’t feel the effects and wouldn’t if you make it under-23 like they do now, as the players selected are younger and are not involved heavily with the first team.

What you might see though is teams wanting their youngsters to go away for a few weeks to play in it which is a huge change to what we have now.

However, Futsal wouldn’t need to take any players from association teams because it already has its own clubs and national teams.
It is governed by Fifa as well as the World Futsal Association. We currently have a Futsal World Cup so why not make it an Olympic sport?

Like rugby sevens, Futsal offers a different kind of skill-set. It is a lot faster paced and the games are shorter which means you could get the tournament over in a week.

We’ve already established that players won’t be taken from clubs so don’t miss any time away from their clubs, which is one of the issues teams have with the current set-up.

It is one less tournament on the footballing calendar so you can then alter the current football schedule, possibly giving players more of a break, though they don’t exactly work hard for the amount they are paid. But that is a whole different Simmonds Speaks in itself and I won’t open up that can of worms now.

From a Great Britain point of view, there have been discussions among coaches who believe more emphasis should be placed on close ball control when developing footballers and more and more clubs are looking at Futsal as a way of coaching kids.

Now, if Futsal were to be inducted into the Olympics tomorrow professional football players would gain no benefit from it as they wouldn’t be taking part.

But what it might do is lead to more kids playing it, developing more technical players and some may make the transition to football.

Brazilian footballers often have a background in Futsal — Ronaldinho often cites it as one of the main factors for him being the player he turned out to be.

If British footballers could produce players of that calibre because of it, surely that is a good thing for the sport?

The smaller pitch demands players make constant, smart decisions. You don’t get time to take seven touches on the ball before deciding what to do. The better players are taking one or two touches before releasing it.

Your first touch must be perfect or your second touch is a tackle to get the ball back.
Goalkeepers are integral to the game as they are basically a fifth player. Joe Hart has recently been dropped as Manchester City’s number one allegedly because of his poor skills with the ball at his feet.
If he had played Futsal as a kid or spent more time working on his distribution, would he be in the predicament he is in now?

A lot is made about British footballers’ technique. That we fail to produce the Xavis and Andres Iniestas of this world. That one occasionally appears but he is more an anomaly and exception.

Having kids playing Futsal from an early age could change all that. So would having more qualified coaches and a complete overhaul of the academy systems but again, another can of worms to be opened on another day (these are starting to stack up aren’t they?)

I’ve tried to watch the football this summer but just feel uninspired by it. Maybe it’s the really poor crowd attendance if Brazil aren’t playing. Maybe it’s the fact that there is no team GB to root for, not that I rooted for England at Euro 2016.

It’s just we see 11v11 all year round. The Olympics are something different, to a degree. A platform for sports and athletes who are ignored for three years then shoved into the limelight when the Olympics are on everyone’s mind.

I have loved watching table tennis, badminton and handball over the past few weeks. Sports which I pay no attention to normally immediately grab my attention when on they are on.

Yes, I am calling for a different style of football, a sport which has enough coverage as it is, but this would be different. We won’t be seeing the same faces, the same countries winning it.

Well, Brazil are likely to dominate as they are currently ranked first in both the men and women’s game, but in the men’s Kazakhstan and Azerbaijan are ranked ninth and 10th respectively which adds something different.

Not to mention some sports are already dominated by certain countries. The basketball is the United States’ to lose, China thrive at the table tennis and over the past few years Jamaica have excelled in the races.

Maybe it’s the fast pace of Futsal that has led to this column. I prefer quicker sports during the Olympics, like table tennis.
Your eyes are following that little white ball, at times losing it because of the spin and swerve.

Some of the rallies witnessed over the past few weeks have left me on the edge of my seat.
The football has put me to sleep on more than one occasion and that isn’t because it has been coming on at 1am.
Futsal is a genuine fun, technical game which could thrive at the Olympics. We should at least be having the discussion as to whether or not it deserves a place either alongside football or as its natural replacement.



Posted by Luca Ranocchiari --> luca.ranocchiari@futsalplanet.com