Players for the national team should be picked from a Professional
League that is playing Futsal all year around. There is no Professional Futsal
League in the country and the players that are being picked for the team are
taken from the Indoor Soccer league teams. Indoor Soccer has no
similarities to Futsal. The ball is different, the field size and surface
is different, there are six players on each team versus five in Futsal, etc.
At the coaching clinic in Spain I realized that players play
Futsal as Futsal, for the game itself, not because there’s no outdoor
soccer. Few, if any, also play outdoor soccer on a competitive level.
That’s a big contrast to the U.S. or Canada, where players focus on outdoor
soccer for nine or 10 months a year, then transition to a 10-week Futsal season
when winter arrives.
There is no doubt that Keith Tozer ( current Futsal National Team Head
coach ) is one of the best Futsal coaches in the US. By growing the
sport we will be having Futsal players who are now coachable also. The
coach will be able to pick from a large pool of Futsal players ( instead of
picking players from the indoor teams ) and train the new methods of play.
To me it would be a surprise of the US National Team DID make it to the World Cup. It takes more than a large wealthy nation, a great coach, and support from US Soccer - there needs to be cultural change which is hard to bring about. The Fifa Futsal World Cup is going on right now and there is pretty much no media coverage in the US. Even among serious soccer fans, very few know that the World Cup is happening and most don't know of any futsal players other than Falcao. It's surprising that US would even be competitive in the Concacaf Futsal Championships.
ReplyDeleteWell said Herbinho,
ReplyDeleteWe need to be talking more often about the game in US. If we can get the federation onboard we will get the media and TV. right now MA Futsal Association has around 250 teams signed up for the league and that is a lot more teams since the past years. It all comes down to marketing. We can start talking about Futsal with all the Outdoor Soccer players and encourage them to watch the game