Futsal: the sport that's on the up
You can't have missed it: more and more well-known football players are associated with Futsal. And future South American football stars have been training with Futsal for ages. In Europe too, especially in Spain, the game which specialises in short passing is on the rise. But the revolution is also under way in our schools and gyms.
Futsal (a contraction of Futebol de Salão) saw the light of day in South America in 1930 and was taken up by France in the 1980s. A development programme was set up by the French governing body for football following the 1998 World Cup. And it was Aimé Jacquet, the manager of the French team that won the World Cup, who was appointed to take charge of the programme as National Technical Director. Who better to pass the message? Since then the discipline continues to expand in France.
A brief reminder - Futsal is played by two teams with five players on each side either indoors, or outside using a hard pitch (cement or tarmac) roughly the size of a handball pitch (40x20m). The ball is specific to futsal: smaller than a normal football with less bounce, which favours a game played at greater speed.
Major competitions, the equivalent of traditional football's World Cup, Champions League and European Championship are in place, the last of which in 2018 helped to put Futsal on the map in France. This was the first time France had participated in this competition. The sport was also included in the Youth Olympic Games (YOG) in Buenos Aires at the end of 2018. The French Futsal Championship D1 (Division 1) has 12 teams.
In order for France to join the major nations at the pinnacle of the sport, the French governing body has recently launched a new Futsal development plan. At the start of the 2018-2019 school year it created a centre for promising young players in Lyon, and also undertook the creation of 31 outdoor Futsal pitches. Each regional league will be able to benefit from this initiative. And let's keep our fingers crossed that the French national team will qualify for the 2020 World Cup in Lithuania. That would really raise the game's profile in France!
