THE HISTORY OF FUTSAL
The first UEFA tournament came in 1996, won by hosts Spain. It was followed by a full UEFA European Futsal Championship in 1999, with Russia victorious. Eight teams were involved in those finals. In 2022, Portugal won a 16-team competition in the Netherlands with 50 of UEFA’s 55 members entering qualification. A club UEFA Futsal Cup began in 2001/02 and is now the UEFA Futsal Champions League, dovetailing with professional competitions in much of the continent.
Futsal is making waves here in North America. However, as is often the case, Canada is just catching on to what the world already knows. Superior soccer skills are built by simulating the outdoor game indoors, with small sided games and a smaller ball. World-famous clubs such as Ajax have used this approach for years.
Futsal has been around for decades, but Canadian interest in soccer skill development has only recently focused attention on the training techniques used in successful soccer powerhouses such as Brazil, Holland, Germany, France and Italy. So, Futsal has been around for many years, but interest is just beginning to explode here.
During the sport’s second world championships held in Madrid in 1985, the Spanish name fútbol sala was used. Since then, all other names have been officially and internationally changed to futsal. The naming was due to a dispute between FIFUSA (the predecessor to the AMF) and FIFA over the name of fútbol. FIFUSA registered the word fut-sal in 1985 (Madrid, Spain). Since then, FIFA has also started using the term futsal. (Wikipedia)
Developed in Uruguay by a teacher named Juan Carlos Ceriani in the 1930s, the game was to be played on a basketball court. Ceriani took the five-a-side team sizes and 40-minute match duration from basketball, pitch and goal dimensions from handball, and goalkeeper rules from water polo.
The game soon spread throughout South America, where the rules were standardized, and the first international confederation was formed in 1965. In 1989, FIFA took over as the sport’s governing body, holding the first edition of its World Cup that January in the Netherlands, Brazil beating the hosts in the final.