Courtesy: Asean Football Web Site


OUR AIM IS TO BE ONE OF THE BEST EIGHT TEAMS IN THE WORLD: PULPIS

February 25, 2011

Jose Maria Pazos Méndez, a Spaniard and who is also known as Pulpis, was appointed Thailand’s chief Futsal coach in 2008 – just prior to the last FIFA Futsal World Cup. A year earlier, Pulpis had coach Autos Lobelle de Santiago to victory at the European Futsal Winners’ Cup.

thai-fussball.de: When you watch the games of the Women’s Futsal League, there seems to be a big gap between the top two-ranked teams as against the rest of the teams in the league. How can this gap getting closed?
Jose Maria Méndez: Yes, this is one of the biggest problems in the Thai League. But this is not only the case in the women’s league but also in the men’s league. The top teams have only a few difficult games in the season. For improvement, it is important that the players have difficult matches every weekend. Having said that, it is also important to point out that the women’s league is only being organised again this year after a one-year hiatus. If the players can continue on the same path with the league, I’m sure that they can only get better. But if the national teams want to become better, the leagues must be stronger.


thai-fussball.de: Do you see any improvement in the women’s national team?
Jose Maria Méndez: The biggest problem is that they cannot concentrate for 40 minutes because in the Thai Women’s League, they do not need to do this. But when they play outside of Thailand they have to play with more intensity or they get into trouble.


thai-fussball.de: Does every coach in the women´s league have a license?
Jose Maria Méndez: No, not at the moment. In the future we plan to organize some courses for them like we did last year before the start of the season, even when the courses are not official. But we feel that they wanna learn and try to help them.


thai-fussball.de: You were coaching the women’s team before they went to the unofficial World Cup in Spain but now you’re just the coach of the men’s national Futsal team. Is this correct?
Jose Maria Méndez: Not exactly, I still try to control the women’s team but I do not want to coach them by myself now. That’s why one of my assistents (Rakphol Sainetngam) went to the World Cup and is coaching the team now. I just supervise the training. At the moment, we try to ensure that every Thai team is playing the same system – starting with the junior teams.


thai-fussball.de: Is there any difference between training the men and the women’s team?
Jose Maria Méndez: Yes. If you work with the men, you can feel that the men already train on a certain level for years with professional coaches. Also, they play a lot of games outside of Thailand. The women have quality but the problem is, they almost always have never played outside of Thailand. They can only compete with teams at the same level as they are. They need to play more games outside of Thailand, more so outside of Asia. I think it will take maybe 10 years until they reach the same level as the men’s team.


thai-fussball.de: What do you know about Thailand’s preparations for the Futsal World Cup next year?
Jose Maria Méndez: I´ve seen the plans for the new stadium in Nong Chok, it looks quite nice. But I am more focussed on working with the team. We try to set up a good preparation for the team. Our ambition is to be one of the best eight teams in the world. We know this is very difficult but we play at home in front of our fans so we hope that we can reach our aim.


thai-fussball.de: Do you know why RBAC is taking part in the Intercontinental Club in Spain?
Jose Maria Méndez: Usually, there are six teams in this tournament, but this time there are only 4 teams (Inter Movistar, Benfica, Carlos Barbosa and RBAC) and one of the teams should be from Asia. The last time they had many problems with the Iranian clubs. The second choice in Asia was a Japanese team but they can’t make it. So the third choice was a team from Thailand and this is RBAC.


thai-fussball.de: The Thai media is very focused to play matches against Brazil. Your thoughts?
Jose Maria Méndez: We have not played against them since three years ago. One of the reasons is that I have more contacts to play in Spain obviously. But this year we have some options to play against Brazil. We invited them to play here in Bangkok in May and we got invited to play a tournament in Brazil in October. We will organize a tournament for six nations in September in Bangkok. The other teams on our wish list are Spain, Italy, Argentina, Portugal and Japan.
These teams are all stronger than our team but that´s the way to become better. But at the moment, only Italy gave their word that they will play in Bangkok. We also got invited for a tournament in Italy and to play another tournament in China in June. But we also have to watch our budget. We don’t know yet how much money we have until the World Cup starts.


thai-fussball.de: Which is the biggest problem for your team?
Jose Maria Méndez: I think that it is self-confidence. They just don’t seem to believe that they can compete with the big teams. Last year, I went with some players to Spain to train with my old club for several weeks. You could see that the level of the Thai players and the players from Spain is similar. Six to seven players easily could play in the Spanish League. They play fast, are creative and have good techniques. But if you play at this level, techniques and tactics are not so important. On this level maybe 60% of the success depends on the mentality.
If you see the Spanish players, they give their maximum in every training session. For the Thai players, one day is good, another day not so good. But this is just a question of having the right mentality. At the moment, they understand the need to be more professional in their way of life and their ways of thinking. If they can do that, I’m sure that they can compete against anyone in the world.


thai-fussball.de: In the Women’s League, most of the players play football. Do you think that it is a problem?
Jose Maria Méndez: No, I don’t think so. In Spain, it is also not a problem. Kids play both Futsal and football until they are 14 or 16-years-old. The best example is the Spanish national team or FC Barcelona – both play Futsal very often. Futsal helps players to play very fast within very small spaces. Of course, it is true that you have to choose which one you want to play when you are 15 or 16-years-old because the tactics are very different then.
The problem in Thailand is that they think that Futsal is more like a hobby. They do not see that this could be a job that gives them the possibility to earn money. Ok, in the women’s league, you can’t get money but some of the men get really good salaries.


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