Courtesy: The Sofia Echo


Futsal in Sofia

Fri 09 Nov 2007

The second Deaf Futsal (the indoor version of football) World Championship will be held in Sofia from November 9 to 18.

Three sport facilities will host the games, to be played by 24 men and 11 women futsal teams. The matches will be played in Hristo Botev Hall and Zimen Dvorets (Winter Palace), both in the Studentski Grad neighbourhood, and in Sofia Hall in Borisova Gradina (Boris Garden). Sofia Hall is the venue for the women’s games.

Bulgaria will be represented only by its national men’s team because the women’s team is preparing for the next European championship, which is to be held in two years’ time.

Currently, 16-year-old girls are taking part in training programmes in Sofia, Plovdiv, Varna and Bourgas.

The men’s teams are organised in four groups, A, B, C and D, each comprising six teams.

Group A are Spain, Uzbekistan, United Arab Emirates, Sweden, Ukraine and Norway. Group B are the Netherlands, Saudi Arabia, Guinea, Switzerland, England and Slovakia. Group C are Bulgaria, Azerbaijan, Sierra Leone, Macedonia, Serbia and Italy, and Group D is Russia, Thailand, Colombia, Turkey, Ireland and Israel.
Groups A and B games will be in Hristo Botev Hall and groups C and D games in Zimen Dvorets.

The first game of the tournament, Spain versus Norway, is scheduled for 9am on November 9 in Hristo Botev Hall.

The official opening ceremony will be later in the day at 5pm in Zimen Dvorets. Right after that is Bulgaria’s opening game against Italy at 6pm. “Bulgaria will hope for a decent performance at the tournament,” the team’s head coach Dimiter Stoilov said. “We have 12 players on the team and 12 of them have been practicing football together with professional players so we are off to a good start.”

At the European championships held in Moscow last year, Bulgaria won silver, and because of the home advantage, the team is considered a pretender for the first three places this year.

England’s team is among the favourites. The team is eager to improve on its ninth place finish at last year’s European championship, when England was eliminated in the group stages on goal difference.

Women’s teams are separated in two groups. Group A is Russia, Spain, Sweden, Germany, Italy and Denmark, and group B England, Norway, Turkey, Israel, Switzerland and Japan.

The event is under the patronage of Bulgarian President Georgi Purvanov, and is organised by International Committee of Sports for the Deaf, Bulgarian Deaf Sports Federation and Bulgarian Football Union – Amateur League.

The city of Maastricht, the Netherlands, was the host in 1996 of the first world championship in Futsal, in which teams from seven countries took part.



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