Courtesy: UEFA.com


Meurs muses on Belgium revival

Friday 11 December 2009

by Paul Saffer

Benny Meurs is respected as one of the world's leading futsal technicians and he told uefa.com that "six or seven years" of work have gone into him coaching Belgium back to a major final tournament. Meurs took charge after Belgium's last UEFA European Futsal Championship finals appearance in 2003, and following some near-misses his multicultural squad defeated FYR Macedonia, Greece and Serbia in Antwerp in March to reach January's finals in Hungary.

uefa.com: It has been a long time since Belgium were in a final tournament ...
Benny Meurs: It has taken six or seven years' hard work, improving all the time. We started six or seven years ago with a whole new team, with young players. We have players from different cultures, so it's not easy to make a team of them, but we missed out on the last European Championship by just one goal. We could've qualified but we had a bit of bad luck. And this time we were just very lucky.


uefa.com: The crowds went up during the qualification mini-tournament. Can you keep up that momentum in the finals?
Meurs: There was not too much publicity around the tournament. In the first game there were 1,000 people, in the second 1,500, and in the third 2,000. It was like the team – we started something, and the team grew during the tournament. Of course, now that we got through, we're trying to do our best and maybe we can reach the second round. If we can do that, I think it will be a magnificent result.


uefa.com: What have you done as a coach to take the step up after coming so close to qualifying in 2007?
Meurs: Everybody thought, 'We were so close, we were so close,' and we just said, 'Look guys, it's not up to the other teams, it's up to us. We're capable of doing it but you have to believe in it. We have to work together.' I don't have to teach them how to control a ball and how to pass a ball. They have to be a team. I have to be more of a psychologist than a coach. This is what we have worked hard on in the last two or years. You will see that we have three Brazilian-born players, one Algerian player, six Moroccan players and four ethnic Belgian players; I mean, it's not easy to make a team out of them. So it took a lot of work, but the work has been done and the results are there.







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