Courtesy: Gazette Live


Futsal Futsal Futsal

Today begins the first of Boro Futsal manager Damon Shaw’s fortnightly column where he will introduce himself and the sport that is futsal and Middlesbrough’s standing in the futsal world.

Hello everyone,

Welcome to this column, which is to become a fortnightly blog on the goings on of Middlesbrough Futsal Club in the community and my thoughts on everything from grassroots to Boro FC and Graeme Dell to Fabio Capello and how they relate to futsal, of course!


My name is Damon Shaw and I am Chairman and manager of Middlesbrough Futsal Club. Kind of like Niall Quinn was at Sunderland! I can’t get sacked… just yet! I founded the University of Teesside Futsal Club just over two years ago now, and as it grew and grew and the opportunities became bigger, I realised we needed to evolve into more than a student club, so Middlesbrough Futsal Club was born.

The University of Teesside went from nothing to a well-respected team very quickly. Our first two games were against York Uni, who are the oldest Uni futsal club in the UK, and Doncaster College, who were then the English Champions. We beat them both 6-0 and 5-4 giving us a great start to life in futsal. We never really looked back, and went from strength to strength, and almost qualified for the FA Futsal Cup finals, losing out after extra time to Salford Victoria! The last kick of normal time in that game was a shot from Rick McGowan being cleared off the line by Salford… So close! Well it wasn’t to be, and to be honest we probably weren’t ready for the national finals.

In our second season (the same season that Boro was born) we built on our near misses and went on to win the British University Futsal Cup: a rise from nothing to the top of University Futsal in less than two years. Boro formed midway through that season and although the team was made up of the same players we used the name of Boro in national competitions. We did well winning the York Futsal Open and finishing second in the Futsal Premier League Northern Conference putting Middlesbrough firmly on the futsal map.

We also reached the FA Futsal Cup Finals and went into the tournament quietly confident we could go far. We ended up finishing in a disappointing 12th place, but we did have the hardest group so we just have to take it as an experience and make sure we learn from our mistakes and go back stronger.

You might well be wondering what futsal is. You’ve probably guessed it’s some kind of football. You’re probably thinking it’s a Brazilian game and that it’s 5-a-side. Well you’re right. It’s indoor 5-a-side football, but not the one that is played off the walls, with a fuzzy yellow ball and a head height rule! It is a version that makes for a tactical, fast and exciting game as opposed to a random, pinball-esque, kick and run game. It originated in Uruguay, to be exact, and was called Futbol Sala, Spanish for football of the room! I’m not going to go into detail about the differences just yet, you can easily find out on the web if you want to know, but the best thing to do is watch. There are plenty of videos on Youtube, and there are two good ones on our website, www.BoroFutsal.co.uk.

I got into futsal in the summer of 2005 after realising the potential it had over 5-a-side. In 5-a-side you can’t play in the FA Cup, UEFA Cup or FIFA World Cup, but with futsal, I saw the opportunities to reach the top and set about getting there. Not only that, I love playing, coaching and talking futsal. I’m only 23, so in my opinion I am at the perfect age to grow up with futsal, as a pioneer, and a coach.

You may have seen it recently on EuroSport. It was the EURO 2007, and Spain emerged as champions. The potential to reach the top was evident to me when watching that, as some of our players, myself included, have played against no less than 8 of the players on show at the European Championship during our tour to Portugal this summer.

So where are Boro in the Futsal world? As I mentioned, we recently went on tour to Portugal. While there, we played some massive clubs like Sporting, FC Barcelona and SL Benfica. The level of futsal in Portugal and Spain is so much higher than in England, but we have to reach that level, and by playing these teams we will close the gap in terms of ability, knowledge and professionalism and one day we will be able to look back on out tour to Portugal and say it was an important step in our development. We lost 18-1 to Sporting and 12-4 to Barca. We were way out of our depth, but nevertheless took away a lot of experience. The other ‘big’ team we played was Benfica and we shamelessly lost 6-5 in a thrilling game. So, against the top European teams we are way off, but domestically, the gap is a lot smaller.

Despite finishing 12th in the FA Futsal Cup finals we only lost 7-6 in the group to the eventual runners-up and 5-3 to the previous year’s runners-up, not bad for our first showing in the finals. More recently we played Manchester and Tranmere Victoria. Tranmere are one of England’s most experienced teams, and finished 3rd in the FA Futsal Cup. They are a good benchmark for other teams, being made up of mostly English players, unlike a lot of futsal teams in England, so in my opinion they are the best “English” team. We beat them in two games 2-1 and 4-0, which was a very pleasing result for us and will give us confidence going into the FA Futsal Conference! So, in England you could say we are one of the top teams, but we are yet to prove it in competitive games!

We are definitely one of the biggest clubs in England, in terms of recognition and reputation. We are regularly doing PR exercises and communicating with our fans via the website. Most recently, Stewart Downing became our honorary president. (Look out for the upcoming press release!) He’s going to help us promote the club and raise the awareness of the game in Boro.

Well, that’s where we are at now, we’ve got a very exciting year ahead and I’ll be back every two weeks updating you and talking about things that can relate back to the futsal world. So thanks for reading, I hope you will follow us as we embark on 2008 and the National Championship, if you have any questions, send an email to damon@borofutsal.co.uk and I will publish the best questions and replies next time. To keep up to date with us don’t forget to check BoroFutsal.co.uk.

Have a very merry Christmas and a happy New Year.

Damon






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