Tranmere in Italy

English Futsal team Tranmere Victoria arrived back in the UK last week encouraged by their performances against Italian opposition in their first visit to one of Europe’s leading Futsal nations. The trip, organised with the assistance of the Italian FA and generous support of UEFA, was arranged to coincide with the group 7 matches of the UEFA Futsal Cup hosted in Perugia, with the objectives of giving the English club the opportunity to play a series of friendly matches against top Italian teams at the same time as allowing them to watch some of Europe’s best teams competing in the UEFA Futsal Cup.


Top Quality Opposition

During their time in Italy, Tranmere played two matches against Serie A and Serie B opposition; beating Magione 4-3 in their first match, before going down 7-3 in their second match to Serie A opponents Terni, conceding three late goals in the last five minutes whilst chasing their first victory against top flight opposition.

Tranmere played their first game against Magione in Perugia’s impressive Pala Evangelisti Arena shortly before the Italian Champions, Perugia, played their opening game of the UEFA Futsal Cup against Macedonian title holders, Skopje, on 9th October.

The Vics’ started slowly, and found themselves 3-0 down in the first 10 minutes (including two own goals), but they came back strongly to level the game by half time. The second half was a closely fought affair, but match winning performances from several players, notably Steve Senyard and ‘keeper Andy Reading gave Tranmere the final edge.

The following day the English team travelled out of Perugia to meet their Serie A opposition, Terni, who occupy a strong mid table position in Italy’s top Futsal league. As anticipated, the Vics found Terni to be a highly skilled, efficient side, eventually losing 7-3; however, it could have been a different story for Tranmere if an excellent opportunity to level the game to 4-4 had been taken with just 5 minutes to go. Tranmere’s Man of the Match at Terni, Steve Senyard, commented after game:

“we were pleased to find we could match our opponents for the majority of the game and we know that for us to be successful at the highest levels of Futsal we must be able to compete in terms of fitness – an aspect of our game that we’ve been working extremely hard on.”


Senyard concluded that …“in the end the quality of our opponents shone through at Terni, and we were hit on the counter attack to great effect towards the end …..but who knows what could have happened if Jay had put that equalizer in!”

Terni emphasized their quality several days later by following up their win against Tranmere with an impressive 1-0 victory against Perugia, the Italian title holders and Italy’s UEFA Futsal Cup entrants.

Italian Support

Commenting on the success of the Club’s visit, Tranmere goal keeper Andy Reading was quick to thank the Italian FA and the local clubs for their generous support and assistance.

“Everyone at Tranmere is grateful for the friendly welcome and support offered by those involved in Futsal at the Italian FA and the clubs of Terni and Magione and we’d love to be able to visit Italy again soon! We’ve also extended invitations to Magione and Terni to come over to England next year.

We realize we still have a long way to go to reach the levels of play that are seen every week in Italy and the rest of Europe’s top leagues, but we know by coming to places like Italy and learning from the best that one day in the future we’ll be competing with the top teams in Europe”.



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