Courtesy: UEFA.com


Hungary finals aim to break the futsal mould

Thursday 22 January 2009

by Márton Dinnyés from Budapest

A year from now the first 12-team UEFA European Futsal Championship will be taking place in Hungary and project manager János Kasza is the man charged with making it happen.

Expanded finals
The 2010 finals run from 18-30 January, moved to a date when the football calendar is on hiatus, and have been expanded from eight to 12 teams. Unlike in previous editions based around one city, the Hungarian Football Federation have made it a national event with games in Budapest and Debrecen to the east, near the Slovakian, Ukrainian and Romanian borders. Kasza, technical director for Hungary's futsal teams and organiser of several previous UEFA mini-tournaments, explained the rationale.

Venues
"The idea was simple when we decided on the venues," Kasza told uefa.com. "The Papp László Budapest Sportaréna and the Fõnix Arena in Debrecen are both state-of-the-art facilities that will be ideal for the EURO and also we can show two typical parts of Hungary to the visiting futsal fans. While Budapest is a sparkling cosmopolitan capital with its own style and night-life, Debrecen is a proper Hungarian town full of gastronomic specialities and pure local culture."

Experience
Kasza has also been learning from recent futsal finals. "I took part in the European Championship in Ostrava in 2005 with the Hungarian team and I also travelled to Porto in 2007 to see how things were going on there and to get some experience," he said. "Actually the [2008 FIFA Futsal] World Cup in Brazil was even more edifying for me as the event was also arranged in two different sport arenas relatively far from each other."

Promotion
Hungary qualified for the first time for the Ostrava finals four years ago, and although they have not reached a similar showpiece since, in preparation for 2010 they have been busy playing a series of friendlies, taking the sport to arenas around the country. "We launched a programme to promote futsal in Hungary and thanks to that most of the international matches are played in front of a lot of supporters and with live TV broadcasts," Kasza said. "We took the national team's most recent matches to different regions and most of them were sold out."

Events
Along with a programme of weekend youth tournaments, the MLSZ is also promoting the finals with a road show that will begin in the summer, putting on a series of outdoor futsal exhibition matches in town squares and other public places. There will also be international competitions in Budapest in April and Debrecen in September. "We have to concentrate on the part of the organisation to have an efficient and fluent event but also we have to focus on the fans' point of view to make futsal matches as attractive as possible," Kasza said.







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