Dear futsal friends,

I would like to introduce you futsal in Slovakia. Its history dates back to 1980-ies when in several regions of Slovakia the first futsal teams started to play their first municipal futsal competitions. They were later associated into a union and since the year 1993, the 1st national futsal league came into existence.
At present, futsal in Slovakia is administered by the Futsal Committee which is one of the committees working at the Slovak Football Association. The Futsal Committee has 9 members: ing. Peter Marušinec – the chairman of the committee, Jozef Sabolík – vice-chairman of the committee and the members: Ing. Vladimír Badura, Mgr. Vladimír Kyška, Juraj Bédi, Mgr. Peter Kuchta, Jozef Hazucha, Ing. Marcel Kubinec and Jozef Štefuš.
There are three national competitions: the 1st division with 12 teams playing in two rounds – autumn and spring, the 2nd division with 5 teams which play the tournament system once a month – each team hosts the other four teams once in a season – i.e. once in the autumn and once in the spring. The third competition is the Cup Competition – the main trophy is the Futsal Committee Cup. In the cup competition participate all teams playing in the 1st, 2nd division as well as the winners of the municipal competitions. In the year 2001 the cup competition had 27 participating clubs, the competition is realised according to the traditional cup system. All futsal competitions begin in September and end in the middle of May. The historical overview of our futsal records since the year 1993 as well as the charts of the 1st division (1993 – 2001) is attached to this document.
In the last season the champion of the first division was the team PROGRAM Dubnica which also participated – for the first time – at the UEFA Champions competition. Although the performance of our champion team was on a high level, we did not manage to win the qualification group (Spartak Moskva, Clearex Chorzow – the winner). The winner of the Cup Competition 2001 was the team TTR Košice. In the final match they won over the team Mäsomax Nitra.
The head coach of the Slovak National Futsal Team is Dr. Ivan Štulajter, his assistants are Dr..Zsolt Pakusza and Jaroslav Vojtek. International manager of the Slovak national futsal team is Dr. Alena Štulajterová. In the last year the national team played 6 official friendly matches with the following results: Poland - Slovakia 6:2, Slovakia - Hungary 4:4, Hungary - Slovakia 7:2, Slovakia – Czech Republic 3:2, Slovakia - Spain 1:7, Slovakia - Spain 1:4.
Slovakia will be – for the first time – the hosting and organising country of the European Championship Qualification Tournament. This is also and outstanding opportunity for our young team to qualify to the final tournament for the first time in the history of the Slovak futsal.
The main task of the Futsal Committee in this year is to unify its members and to involve the teams playing in the regions in the competitions organised by the committee. One of the most progressive trends in Slovak futsal is a co-operation with FIFUSA. We managed to find common solutions and since the season 2003-2004 there will only be one form of indoor football in Slovakia – futsal – played according to valid FIFA rules. We believe that this is a positive signal for the sake of the improvement of the quality of futsal in Slovakia. To conclude, Slovakia will always support the idea of futsal being one of the Olympic sports as futsal really deserves it.

Peter Marušinec
Slovak Futsal Committee Chairman