Football has also found its way in into the indoor sport class. It is known as Fustal. It is game played on a hard court, smaller than a football pitch. It has similarities to five-a-side football, yes! you heard me right! You do remember the term ‘monkey post’, Nigeria’s number one street football; something like that.
Futsal is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper. Unlimited substitutions are permitted. Unlike some other forms of indoor soccer, the game is played on a hard court surface marked by lines; walls or boards are not used. Futsal is played with a smaller, harder, low-bounce ball than soccer.
It is important to note that as you read this article, the FIFA Futsal World Cup Lithuania 2021 is ongoing.
The origin of Futsal is said to have started in 1930 when Juan Carlos Ceriani, a teacher in Montevideo, Uruguay, created a version of indoor football for recreation in YMCAs. This new sport was originally developed for playing on basketball courts and a rule book was published in September 1933.
Association football (soccer) was already highly popular in the country and after Uruguay won the 1930 World Cup and gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics, it attracted even more practitioners. Ceriani’s goal was to create a team game that could be played indoor or outdoor but that was similar to football.
Ceriani, writing the rule book, took as examples the principles of association football (the possibility to touch the ball with every part of the body except for the hands), and he took rules from other sports too: from basketball the number of team players (five) and the game duration (40 actual minutes); from water polo the rules about the goalkeeper; from team handball for the field and goal sizes.
The YMCA spread the game immediately throughout South America. It was easily played by everyone, everywhere, and in any weather condition, without any difficulty, helping players to stay in shape all year round. These reasons convinced João Lotufo, a Brazilian, to bring this game to his country and adapt it to the needs of physical education.
Initially, the rules were not uniform. In 1956, the rules were modified by Habib Maphuz and Luiz Gonzaga de Oliveira Fernandes within the YMCA of São Paulo, Brazil, to allow seniors to compete.[citation needed] Luiz de Oliveira wrote the Book of Rules of Fuitsal in 1956, then adopted also at the international level.
In 1965, the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol de Salón (South American Futsal Confederation) was formed, consisting of Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Argentina and Brazil.
Shortly after, a unique tournament was organized. It attracted some interest in South American media, which regularly began to follow futsal. In particular, it was the journalist José Antônio Inglêz who passionately contributed to the rapid spread of the game, as well as being credited as the man who coined the name “futsal” to define the sport.
The most attended futsal match in history was played on 7 September 2014 on Mane Garrincha Stadium in Brazil’s capital Brasilia between Brazil and Argentina in front of 56,483 spectators.
naming of the sport comes from Spanish fútbol sala or fútbol de salón and from Portuguese futebol de salão and may be translated as “indoor football”. During the sport’s second world championships held in Madrid in 1985, the Spanish name fútbol sala was used. The World Futsal Association registered the name futsal in 1985, following a dispute with FIFA over the name fútbol. Since then futsal has become the officially and internationally accepted name, and FIFA is till using the name its International tournaments.
The FIFA Futsal World Cup in stats
FIFA Futsal World Cup and AMF Futsal World Cup are the two major World International tournaments for the sport. FIFA had its first edition in 1989 hosted by Netherlands, with Brazil as the winners. AMF maiden edition was held in 1982 hosted by brazil and won by brazil.
