This is surprising, definitely. When we heard about it for the first time, in the beginning of June, honestly we thought about a joke. But that was true and Semen Andreev also confirmed it in a recent interview released on the russian portal Championat.ru and reported by AMFR.

Yeah, Russian Futsal Superleague is going to play 50 minutes games, two halves of 25. A decision that, no need to point it out, is absolutely against the official laws of the game run by FIFA, the same rules that FIFA itself claimed to be respected in a mandatory way all over the world (something absolutely right, even though we can discuss on which rules are the best for futsal).

Andreev reports, during the interview, that this kind of "experiment" was taken as a consequence of the dicreased number of matches. As you know until the past season each round of the local superleague was composed of two matches played in two days. Taken into account the worlwide financial crisis AMFR thought to help their clubs through a limited number of games. Having lost 40 minutes for each round and considering the (sometimes) huge distances which involve russian clubs in their away matches, the second statement was to give them back "more futsal minutes" through adding 10 minutes to the traditional match duration.

Also, Andreev told that FIFA has allowed this experiment, though this information was denied by Marco Schüepp at FIFA, as he reported that no request came from Russian FA regarding this supposed change.

It's quite clear that, if allowed, this change would open dangerous doors in futsal management, as every national association could think about more viable solutions for their own league. Just to make the most obvious example: why the spanish LNFS should not decide to use their ancient rules, especially consdering that they were a notable reason of the Division De Honor international success and spectacle? What is going to happen? We will know that soon, stay tuned.

Finally Andreev confirmed that the next superleague will be played by 16 clubs, but that is not actually something new as also the past edition was featuring 16 sides before Spartak Ruza and Dinamo St. Petersburg had to renounce to take part in it.








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