Courtesy: The Jakarta Post

Futsal seeks to grab nation's attention

Sports News - December 05, 2007

Crisscrossing with the ball at his feet, Jaelani Ladjanibi stormed toward his double-teaming opponents on the indoor field.

Walls of legs did not stop him from controlling the ball. With sharp turns and cheers from the crowd, he passed it to his teammate -- but no goal rewarded his acrobatic efforts.

Jaelani, the national futsal team captain, is leading the Indonesian team in the 2007 Southeast Asian (SEA) Games.

"We won 6-3 ... they weren't so bad, it was only a warm-up match, but we hesitated to play at our full strength. The SEA Games will begin in days and we don't need any injuries," said the 22-year-old -- the youngest and most skilled player on the team -- about a trial with a local club here recently.

Futsal will be played for the first time at the Games this year. The sport has only become popular in the region in recent years and Indonesia is confident of a silver medal.

Futsal is an indoor version of football, played by two teams of five players on a field delimited by lines.

Futsal got its break in Indonesia after the Asian Football Confederation Futsal Championship was held in Jakarta in 2001, attracting soccer players to the game.

"The game is more interesting than soccer and players are forced to think faster," said national player Israqul Issa, who started playing the sport in 2003 after playing on the West Java regional soccer team.

Head coach Justin Lhaksana said after gaining more futsal match experience at the Asian Indoor Games in Macau, China, the road to the SEA Games finals had been smoothly paved.

"In Macau, we were in a hard group with Iran, the eight-time consecutive Asian champion; Kyrgyzstan and Lebanon, both of which are in Asia's top eight; and Saudi Arabia. We nearly made the second round," he said.

The coach said Indonesia would face host Thailand, Asia's No. 2, as its main rival at the SEA Games.

Indonesia will have to beat Vietnam and Laos in Group B, while in Group A Thailand will meet Malaysia, the Philippines and Myanmar.

"After winning the group, we will most likely meet Malaysia in the semifinals and then Thailand in the final," Justin said.

He added Indonesia was better than Malaysia, both in terms of skills and physical condition, but acknowledged that Asia's second-best futsal team, Thailand, was two levels better than Indonesia.

"We've never won against Thailand, but if we make it through to the final, the players would definitely go all out in the match."

He said after coming home from Macau, the team realized it had main two weaknesses.

"We were bad at finishing and we lost a lot in body contacts. But to overcome (these weaknesses) we have practiced more offensive variations, optimized our wing attacks and introduced a more mobile flow of play and more ball passes to reduce body contacts."

Although the national squad players had been chosen from the maiden Liga Pro professional futsal competition held in the capital, which comprised only six private-sponsored teams, Justin said he had known the players long before.

"I met them during college league matches in 2004, I know them, and we had a strict selection process for the team" he said.

Assistant coach Andri Paranoan said the team would definitely go for gold.

"A gold medal would help the sport gain more attention from people and the government. It would be a statement of achievement," said the 24-year-old.

"I believe futsal will be a prominent sport in the future,it's really promising. We might not be able to win in field football, but we can win in the next most-popular version of it," Jaelani said.





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