Courtesy: theguardian.com

by Jamie Fahey

England finally put their best foot forward in the futsal revolution

The five-a-side game made famous by Spain and Brazil is catching on increasingly here and the results are beginning to show

In a quickfire word-association game it is fair to say the mention of “futsal” would not normally provoke “England” as a visceral response. For anyone quick enough to utter a snappy rejoinder, perhaps the gut reaction might be “Brazil”, “Messi” or – for the connoisseurs – maybe even the futsal legend Falcão.

All of which might explain why the England futsal team’s historic achievement – reaching the main qualification round of the 2016 Futsal World Cup – has gone largely unnoticed.

On Thursday the team will kick off against the futsal giants of Ukraine in the first of three group matches in Hungary over four days in an attempt to go one step further and reach the finals in Colombia.

“The event is a chance to go in with the big boys,” says the England coach, Pete Sturgess. “It will be a really good indicator of the progress we’ve made over the past few years.” Sturgess was speaking at the final weekend training camp at St George’s Park for a team who were formed only 12 years ago – and won only one of their first 50 competitive matches – but have since edged up the world rankings past Vanuatu and Tahiti to 55th, tucked in between Chile and Moldova.

Although still a minority sport in England, futsal is the Fifa and Uefa sanctioned version of five-a-side born in South America and played indoors with a smaller, heavier ball with a restricted bounce and a four-second time limit on kick-ins and goalkeeping distribution.

It is widely regarded as hugely influential in the early development of technical excellence by luminaries of football such as Messi, Ronaldo, Coutinho, Oscar and Barcelona’s Spanish rondo brigade.

The countries where the sport is biggest – Spain, Brazil (where more people play it than they do football), Portugal, Russia and Iran – all have long-established professional leagues. The US pro futsal league begins next year. England has merely flirted with professionalism so far. Clubs in the newly restructured Super League – funded by the FA – are overwhelmingly non-professional.

Among the 16 players fine-tuning their tactics at the England futsal camp only three play futsal full-time: the winger Agon Rexha and the sweeper Doug Reed play for Baku London (the first futsal club to become professional in England) while the winger/sweeper Guillermo Wallace plays for Real Betis futsal club in Spain. The promising 21-year-old winger James Webb plays division three futsal (only the first two divisions are professional) in Spain. q

The rest of the squad combine working with playing part-time at Super League clubs. The squad make-up of the strongest clubs – skewed overwhelmingly towards Spanish, Portuguese and Brazilian players – would make the average football Premier League club owner blush.

If a small selection pool were not challenging enough for the England coaching team, the reality of part-time players with day jobs throws up another obstacle. Two of the most experienced players, Manchester futsal club’s impressive Stuart Cook and England’s record goalscorer Luke Ballinger, missed the first two days of the crucial weekend camp to play semi-professional football for Northwich Victoria and Chippenham Town respectively.

Cook is garnering a reputation for lightning-quick feet while Ballinger, 27, is England’s record cap holder (closing in on a century) and highest goalscorer: he reached the 50-goal mark with a hat-trick in the 7-3 defeat of Sweden in front of 1,400 fans – another record – at the Copperbox Arena in east London in February.

“We’ve constantly overcome obstacles,” explains Sturgess. “But in terms of the players, what we’re getting now is a generation who are wired in a slightly different way.

“They’re now playing more futsal than football so they’re coming in with much more of a futsal understanding. One of the big things in futsal is reading the visual triggers. The lack of time and space on the court means players are constantly under pressure. The more you play and higher level, the quicker you see the triggers. We’re now seeing players with those perceptive skills.”

The evidence on the court during the camp (comprising four high-intensity training sessions over two days interspersed with ice baths, hydrotherapy and forensic video analysis of the tactics of their forthcoming opponents) offered credence to this assessment. The high-octane sessions offered up an array of exceptional ball mastery, one v one skills and tactical cohesion: instant ball control with the sole in tight spaces (think classic Philippe Coutinho – or perhaps England’s own Ross Barkley); rapid and creative one- and two-touch passing; relentless off-the-ball movement and rotations in attack (think Eden Hazard, Willian and Oscar’s 2014 vintage); and rapid-fire counter-attacks after a bout of intense, suffocating pressing (a blurry vision of Klopp’s all-new Liverpool).

It is impressive stuff. But given England still retain relative minnow status in the sport, the progress so far at the top of the game is best described as evolutionary.

Perhaps the revolution has come with the acceptance by the FA, the professional clubs and grassroots youth football of futsal as a hothouse for developing the composure on the ball, decision making and game intelligence that England’s premier footballers are exposed as sorely lacking with every passing tournament debacle.

The FA estimates Charter Standard grassroots leagues are taking 10,500 children indoors to play futsal during the bleak, waterlogged midwinter months; meanwhile, in keeping with the overhaul of the FA’s coaching pathways more than 200 grassroots football coaches a month are taking their first step on the FA’s futsal coaching ladder.

Adult participation in the FA futsal 5s leagues is growing and, at youth level, this year’s FA futsal festival – in its ninth year – attracted 2,500 teams comprising 15,000 boys and girls from U10s and U16s. The British Universities and Colleges Sport has also registered a huge growth in numbers playing the game.

Meanwhile the FA’s commitment to the futsal coaching pathway has seen nearly 5,500 level one-qualified coaches since 2012. At present more than 200 coaches a month are achieving the qualification by attending the one-day course. There are 322 coaches qualified at level two and 34 candidates are halfway through the pilot Uefa B futsal course.

The FA’s “age-phase guidelines” released last weekend to flesh out the much-trumpeted but somewhat vague England DNA – launched this time last year as part of the Dyke Commission to create a template for the development of the future senior England football player – offers stark parallels with the principal benefits of futsal.

Sturgess, who also doubles up as the FA’s head of the foundation phase (ages five-11), is keen to emphasise the point. “What we’ve found is that there are more and more links with what we want the DNA messages to be with the benefits kids will get from playing futsal,” he said.

“We’ve got three big headlines for each phase: mastering the ball and being prepared to stay on the ball, seeking creative solutions and combining creatively with team-mates. That’s the game of futsal. For player development, it is not the [only] answer but certainly for us in England it is part of the solution.”

Professional football seems to concur. Premier League academies have incorporated futsal in their games programme for the nine-11 age group since the introduction of the Elite Player Performance Plan in 2012. This season it was extended to the U12s. They also run competitive tournaments every weekend from December to February.

Ian Bateman, the FA’s club liaison officer helping to integrate futsal into the professional clubs, says the impact on the Category One academies has been profound.

He has witnessed a transformation in the past 18 months, from the common misconception that futsal was “five-a-side with a funny ball” to an appreciation of the huge gains for young players. “Alan Irvine went to watch the Barcelona futsal team when he was head of the academy at Everton,” says Bateman. “And he was amazed at the tactical returns the game can bring. Obviously the technical benefits were clear – Everton have been using futsal for a few years now – but a lot of the Premier League clubs are now starting to appreciate the real benefits playing the game can bring.”

The theme of unexpected returns does not end there, according to Mike Skubala, England assistant coach and director of football at Loughborough University. “The biggest thing futsal teaches young footballers is the value of attention to detail,” Skubala says. “The game is so fast that you always have to anticipate. It offers so much in terms of technical, tactical, social and psychological development. In futsal it’s high-stress situations all the time.

“While the technical returns are more obvious – ball mastery, decision-making and playing out under pressure – a massive part of the tactical returns for players is how to defend: that’s defending as an individual but also as a unit. For example a midfield playing a diamond formation in football or the principles of how they press as a group. It all transfers straight over to football.”

But what about the future of English futsal and the sustainability of the game as a sport in its own right against a backdrop of cuts and restructuring at the FA, which funds the national leagues? Sturgess is comforted by the knowledge that the FA’s technical director, Dan Ashworth, is a firm advocate of futsal, particularly as a development tool for young footballers. “We always want more,” says Sturgess. “But when you look at where we started with futsal – the lack of facilities, a league structure, qualified referees and coaches – we’re now in a totally different place. I can’t see that progress slipping.”

The England team might well be outsiders in Hungary over the next few days but the game itself seems a certainty to retain a growing influence on the next generation of footballers.

The numbers game

The first version of futsal was developed in 1930 by an Argentinian coach, Juan Carlos Ceriani, in Montevideo, Uruguay, to be played in YMCAs away from the elements. A similar game was soon being played on the streets of São Paulo, Brazil. The name futsal comes from the Portuguese futebol de salao (room football).

55 England’s current world ranking. The top five are: Spain, Brazil, Russia, Italy, Iran.

4 The number of seconds allowed to take kick-ins (no throw-ins) and for the goalkeeper to distribute the ball. There is no offside law in futsal.

5 The number of players in a team (the maximum squad size is 12 and substitutions are unlimited) each team is also allowed five fouls before the next one results in a direct kick (with only the goalkeeper to beat) from the second penalty spot 10 metres out.

3m x 2m The size of the goals.

42m x 25m The maximum court size under Fifa laws of the game. The minimum is 25m x 16m.

40 The minutes duration of a match, which is played to a stopped clock when the ball goes off the court.

30% The amount by which a standard futsal bounces less than a regular football.

15,000 The number of boys and girls aged 10-16 who took part in the 2015 FA national youth futsal festival.

200 The number of grassroots football coaches each month qualifying as futsal coaches by completing the FA’s one-day level one course.

10,500 The number of youth footballers playing futsal in the winter months in matches organised by Charter Standard leagues to escape the perennial problem of waterlogged pitches.

1,200 The number of teenagers enrolled on the Football League Trust futsal scholarship programme resulting in BTEC qualifications.



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