It's a grotesque challenge, for many reasons. We refer to the hard fight started today on the use of the "oriundi" players (read our previous news also related to this matter: click here) between the FIFA director of competitions Jim Brown and the Italian Futsal Committee president Fabrizio Tonelli, as well as the brazzurri's coach Alessandro Nuccorini. During a press conference held today in Rio de Janeiro Brown told that the italian situation (since Ostrava 2005 no Italian born player have taken part in a official tournament final stage, such Euro or World Champs, beeing the last ones Angelini and Zaffiro in Taipei 2004) is not ideal. Divisione Calcio a 5 President Tonelli has answered to Brown, telling that these declarations are not opportune during a competitions like the World Cup, adding that if one player is italian he has full right to wear the (Italian) national team shirt. Finally, Italy's head coach Nuccorini told that Italy has respected all rules about oriundi players, while he's not sure the other nations did the same (this is, we guess, 99% related to the position of the Paraguayan goalie Gazolli, just in case of bad results vs the Ruiz Diaz' squad, but no worries, Italy is stronger). Nuccorini then asked FIFA to check about the other nations oriundi position, adding that in order to respect the rules Italy had to renounce to Arzeni (Arceni Júnior Barboza "NUNO", who played in the past with Brazilian National team), Pinto (JONAS, another former player of Brazil) and Ferreira (PARREL, one more former player of canarinhos). About Jonas and Parrel we're a little bit confused as they've both already played for Italy though not in Euro or World Cup final stages, if that was the meaning of Nuccorini's sentences. We wonder if changing national team is a normal process in sport: we refer to players like Alexandre, Seco and Jocimar, as well as Vinicius Bacaro who won a Mundialito with Brazil against Italy and then turned to the azzurri shirt).

Coming back to the original matter, we also wonder why Brown has noticed the oriundi's affair in futsal just at the end of 2008. We have to remind that Italy started this process almost ten years ago, beginning with two brazilians, winning a European champ with 10 brazzurri and completing this weird kind of futsal development with a 100% brazilian team since the European champs 2005 played in Ostrava. We wonder (wondering night!) why those questions are discussed during a World Cup and forgotten in the 4 years between two editions. We agree with Tonelli, this is not the opportune moment: it's a basic question to be discussed always, until reaching a SOLUTION (which in our opinion should be very far from the mentioned 6+5 concept that FIFA want to adopt for soccer: for futsal we suggest a 12 NATIVE players "concept"). This in order to avoid to celebrate, in 2012, a mere Brasileiro de Seleções tournament. Think on it.

Also, we're in need to mention that Italy cannot be focused as the only "scandal guilty" as the whole European futsal (plus some extra european countries) are involved in the same process, even though with less impressive numbers: Portugal, Spain, Azerbaijan, Russia and Belgium for instance. This is also clear in the respective leagues, where "original born" players are relegated in the lower divisions and the top level is a matter of south american importation. No need to explain the dramatic consequence of that, we have underlined that so many times through futsalplanet.

The real key is: who cares about futsal? Just a silly example: 4 years ago it was told that FIFA wanted to develop Futsal in Chinese Taipei, that was the reason to host a World Cup there. Have you ever heard about futsal in Chinese Taipei after that event (if not in our news)?

In this challenge, the announced loser is once again futsal. We're not interested in attacking or criticizing Italy rather than FIFA, but we would surely love to give futsal some dignity back. Let's work in favour of it.

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