Courtesy: Solomon Star News


Coach eyes 2012 Futsal World Cup

Tuesday, 06 October 2009

THE national futsal head coach, Dickson Kadau, is setting his eyes on the 2012 Futsal World Cup.

“Our participation in the Alfateh Intercontinental Futsal Championship is part of our journey to the 2012 FIFA Futsal World,” he told the Solomon Islands Football Federation Media Office before leaving last Friday.

Kadau is leading his boys to their second international outing for this year.

This time, it is the Alfateh Intercontinental Futsal Cup in Libya, which is similar to the Futsal Confederations Cup since the top six teams from the six FIFA Confederacies are taking part.

‘For us, this competition is going to be tougher than the World Cup and it is just what we need as we chart our course,” Kadau added.

The young Kurukuru boys, now dubbed the ‘ice-cream’ team, will take on some of the biggest names in futsal in the Alfateh Cup. They will play against five top teams in the world.

Captain Elliot Ragomo said: ‘This tournament will help to build us into better players in this code and will certainly be a big plus in our qualifying campaign for the 2012 World Cup.”

Kurukuru’s participation will be a crucial experience for the players and the team management. Most of the local players are in their late teens and still have the potential to grow into top class futsal players in two to five years time.

Kadau said the team will use the tournament to gauge how far it has come since the Futsal World Cup in 2008.

‘The players have undergone a lot of development in the past year and this is a good opportunity to see if we have made headway against the rest of the world,” he said.

In May this year, the Win In Oceania Futsal Development Officer, Scott Gilligan, assisted the National Futsal Team. One of the main areas Gilligan worked with the team was the defence.

This effort paid greatly in the 2009 Oceania Futsal Championship when the Kurukurus wowed Oceania with a convincing rout of all their opponents including an 8-1 demolition of hosts Fiji in the grandfinal.

Kurukuru returns home on 14 October 2009.







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