ON THE WORLD STAGE
With millions of players worldwide, futsal is a fantastic game in its own right, with professional leagues throughout Europe, South America and Asia and a FIFA Futsal World Cup every four years. The current world champions are Brazil. Futsal produces technically excellent players and as such is an invaluable tool for football development.
Futsal actively promotes:
- individual ball skills, close control and dribbling,
- creativity and improvisation,
- maintenance of ball possession,
- one-touch passing (along the ground)
- accurate shooting, and
- teamwork and off the ball movement.
World superstars such as Pele, Zico, Ronaldinho, Cristiano Ronaldo, Iniesta, Messi and Neymar have all acknowledged the role futsal played in their football development. Futsal has its own superstars with Brazil’s ‘Falcão’, arguably the world’s greatest player and often referred to as ‘The Pele of Futsal’. He has won world player of the year 4 times and is among the most skilful players.
Mainland Football, along with NZ Football, are confident that with the support of all its affiliates and the ongoing support of FIFA and Oceania, futsal will grow in popularity in New Zealand. Currently there are several thousand players involved in futsal in this country and that number is expected to grow considerably under the NZF Futsal programme.
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