Courtesy: The FA.com

Futsal reigns

By Graeme Dell

Thursday, 19 July 2007

The weather has been awful, but that has not stopped the world of Futsal.

Hi everyone.

The summer seems to be flying past despite the weather - thank goodness for an indoor sport.

Last weekend was The FA Umbro Futsal Finals at the EIS in Sheffield, the culmination of the domestic Futsal period and a chance for the teams to end the season on a high.

It gets a bigger event each year with over 100 staff, mainly volunteers, making sure it all runs smoothly and this year was no exception. Whilst I always think I’ll have a relaxing weekend watching the matches it rarely turns out that way and with so many enthusiastic people working alongside you it’s hard to just sit back.

I managed to watch parts of almost every game and view all the players in the tournament, which was my objective. It takes some planning and moving from court to court but it has to be done to make sure we don’t miss anyone. I’ve got plenty of others spotting for me whose opinions I value.

Having said a couple of weeks ago that Ipswich Wolves were the best Futsal team in the country, that was confirmed as they cruised to become the 2007 FA National Futsal Champions. They will be a fitting representative for England in the UEFA Futsal Cup in 2008.

Their coach Jorge Ribeiro is a nice man, co-operative and keen to develop the game in Suffolk, yet he was totally overwhelmed when I spoke to him.

I was also pleased to see Vaughan’s make the final as their manager Luis Melville, who works in the Community Scheme at Brentford, is also a great supporter of Futsal.

Both teams were quite a way in front both technically and physically from the others although I thought that the general standard of play was much improved from last year.

Whilst Ipswich consists entirely of young Portuguese players, Vaughan’s are made up of former or current F30 players. They showed why they’ve been on that programme and what they’ve learnt in recent years by being the most advanced of the teams comprising English players.

Luis has done a great job in getting them together and although they were beaten by a very good team on the day they contributed to a good Final.

The only disappointment of the weekend for me was that a few teams haven’t progressed. Sticking with the same players or importing foreign players rather than developing their own won’t help us move Futsal forward.

We will only get better if the clubs embark on a process of new talent development and recruitment to the game and some clubs are missing that. This approach has to be the challenge of an aspiring coach.

The stats showed that around 55 per cent of the players on show were eligible for England and of those there are several lads who interested me and I’ll be inviting them to come and train with F30 in October.

It’s interesting watching players in that environment, specifically how they behave when they’re not playing, their attitude towards fellow players and how interested in Futsal they are off the court and their professionalism in preparing.

I was taught a long time ago that you don’t have to know someone to know what they’re like as a person – just spend time watching them and you will learn most of what you need to know about them – it’s very true.

Any sport at the highest level is about being disciplined and wanting to constantly learn. Futsal is no different. Living ‘on the road’ also requires respect for other players and a ‘life discipline’ and these are factors which I look for when I’m considering players for the National Team.

It was great to see former England captain Alex Sykes awarded both the Top Goalscorer and Player of the Tournament, a fitting accolade for his performances over the weekend. He’s learnt a great deal being on F30 and once more showed that he rightly held the England captaincy for so long.

The fact that he did so well and yet I decided to move forward without his abilities on F30 indicates the standard I am striving for at National Team level for the future.

Those are tough decisions I’ve got to make but I not one for taking the safe option as it won’t allow us to move forward. We can’t be solely reliable upon one player’s abilities so I’m always looking to the future.

FA Chairman Geoff Thomson attended the Final and having sat alongside him, admittedly chatting almost all the way through it, I realised how much of a fan of Futsal he is, having seen a great deal of the game during his travels for UEFA and FIFA.

The EIS is always a good place to network with many of our Olympic sports based there and I got invited to a discussion with the Performance Managers of British Handball and Volleyball which was very enlightening. There are some synergies between all of our sports and that meeting will be re-convened in several weeks to see how we might be able to work closer with a view to possible talent, resource, facility or knowledge sharing for the future.

These are valuable relationships which I have always tried to develop across other sports, as coaches we have much to learn from each other. Bizarrely, I also bumped into Malcolm Brown, who’s the Performance Manager of British Diving and someone I’ve worked alongside at previous World University Games in both 2003 and 2005 so it proved to be a full-on weekend.

Having just about recovered from Sheffield I went to Bisham last week to watch the England Senior Women train. Hope Powell is refining her group of players which she’ll whittle down to the 21 that will travel to China and they were all getting their last chance to impress her. I just kept willing them to give the ball to Kaz Carney and Fara Williams who are two very exciting young prospects with great abilities.

I was at Wembley this Sunday for The FA Umbro Fives and I had a really enjoyable day out catching up with loads of people in the game. There was so much fun had by everyone and the magical opportunity to play on the hallowed turf for people who, other than for this competition, wouldn’t have that chance.

Whilst I didn’t see a great deal of talent that I could use for Futsal there were two players who stood out and I’ll look at them in October too.

The whole day had a real festive feel to it and I was delighted to be invited to be part of the Final presentation party in the Royal Box alongside Sir Trevor Brooking, John Barnes and my old friend Martin Prothero from sponsors Umbro.

My Bangkok squad has also kept me busy over the fortnight. One or two clubs are getting tetchy about player release as other players in their clubs pick up injuries in pre-season which is the main frustration that National Coaches face, at all levels.

What surprises me as a coach is that these young players' opportunities and their personal development is rarely considered and that has to be why we’re here as coaches, to use everything possible to improve them and the World Student Games are a proven vehicle for that.

Finally, we’ve now got three double header Futsal fixtures confirmed before the end of this year. We’ll play Andorra and Georgia away at the end of September and November respectively before we entertain what will be a very strong Greece side in early December at home. I’m not sure of a venue yet but I’ll let you know as soon as we’ve selected one.

That’s it for now. The next time I write to you will be from our holding camp hotel in a very hot and humid Bangkok.

So until then, take care.

Graeme



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