Courtesy: British Universities Sports Association

GB compete at World University Futsal Championship

30/08/2006

The 10th World University Futsal Championship kicked off on Monday in Poznan, Poland. 16 teams are taking part this time, with a full ranking classification system, where every team will finish between 1 and 16. Great Britain are competing for the 2nd time in succession and are hoping to finish higher than their last result of 16th, with the help of a local student in their ranks.

Futsal is still in the early stages of development in the UK, which goes someway towards explaining the 16th position of the squad last time out, compared with other nations such as Brazil, Portugal and Spain. Two years on and the players and staff, led by manager Graeme Dell, are hoping for a result that reflects the development of the game in the UK since 2004, which has seen the number of regional leagues and clubs almost double.

Great Britain’s opening game was against Brazil who took 3 minutes to open the scoring. GB held out well, but were on the back foot all the game, only creating a few half-chances, Daniel Hogan (Doncaster Deaf College) coming closest to scoring. Ben Mortlock (Teesside) made his debut and although he didn’t play for very long, held his own and even had a shot on target. The score was 5-0 at half time.

Brazil seemed to relax a little in the second half, with the prospect of 3 games in as many days, and rested some of their better players, such as Pele, mooted as the best futsal player in Brazil. Although GB were still being dominated and Brazil should have made it double figures the final result was 9-0.

Great Britain now face Slovakia and Slovenia, who drew 1-1 in the opening game and are hoping to translate the futsal lesson handed to them by Brazil into a result.

For more information on the Championship visit www.fisu.net.



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