Barca crowned Premier League Champions!

Reporting by Pablo De Oliveira & Doug Reed

Last week Barcelona clinched the first ever futsal tournament hosted by The Premier League. They held an under 15 tournament which featured the best Premier League football teams as well as invited teams Barcelona Alusport and Inter Movistar, both from Spain.

Before this final tournament there had been regional qualifiers featuring all the Premier League clubs and the winners of the 3 regions were Fulham, West Brom and Everton. They would face a much more difficult test in Birmingham with the inclusion of the two invited Spanish futsal teams.

Barcelona got off to a shaky start as the speed and directness of West Brom meant they lost 5-2. However after this, and despite featuring players 1 and 2 years younger than the age requirement, a change of strategy meant they nullified the difference in physical attributes and went on to record victory in the rest of their games.

With the Barcelona 1st team recording the treble last season it seems their youth section is following in their footsteps. Maybe we will see a Barcelona 1st team filled with homegrown players in the upcoming years. After seeing the demands futsal places on players some Premier League teams may now utilise futsal in their training programs or maybe they will see the light and leave football altogether and just develop futsal players for futsal.

February will see a similar event for the under 12 age group.

Results:

Saturday 28th Jan
West Brom vs Barcelona 5-2
Inter Movistar vs Everton 3-10
Fulham vs Everton 11-7
West Brom vs Inter Movistar 3-2
Fulham vs Barcelona 4-5

Sunday 29th Jan
Fulham vs West Brom 10-4
Everton vs Barcelona 2-6
Inter Movistar vs Fulham 5-0
West Brom vs Everton 8-8
Barcelona vs Inter Movistar 3-2

Champions: Barcelona Alusport (Spain)