What would you say is the fastest growing sport in the country?’ If I told you that, according to the FA, it is Futsal, your reply might be the same as most people’s, ‘what is Futsal?’ If I then said it was a type of five-a-side indoor football developed in South America, you could get the wrong idea for it is unlike most of the small-a-side indoor football played in this country.
If you have not seen or played indoor football, then let me explain that here it is played on small courts with low goals. The walls are treated as part of the playing surface. That is to say the players play off the walls along the side and sometimes at the end, which means that the ball is almost always in play. The goal area is a semi-circle and, in most tournaments, the outfield players can’t enter it and the goalkeeper can’t come out. If they do, it results in a penalty. Another restriction that many tournaments have is that the ball must not go above head height which results in an indirect free kick.
Apart from the goal area being a semi-circle, none of this applies to Futsal, which is played internationally and there is a FIFA World
Cup played for every four years.
First of all it has touch-lines and goal-lines. If the ball goes over the touch line, it is a kick-in rather than a throw-in and instead of a goal kick there is a
goal-clearance: the goalkeeper throws the ball back into play from the goal area. Otherwise the game is played much as normal 11-a-side matches except there are no offsides. There are, however, a number of additional laws.
A team consists of up to twelve players of whom only five may play at any one time. The other seven may be used as substitutes and a player substituted, may return later in the game. There are very strict rules about when and where they may enter the field of play.
The major difference comes in the punishment of offences. All offences are the same as for 11-a-side football but once a team has committed five offences in either half, the subsequent free kicks, instead of being taken from where the offence occurred, are taken from what is called the long penalty mark. There are two penalty marks. The short one is for fouls committed in the goal area by the defending side and is six metres from the goal. The long penalty mark is ten metres from goal but for this kick the goalkeeper does not have to stay on his line and can stand five metres from the ball, so scoring is not easy.
The goals, incidentally, are two metres high by three metres wide. A player sent off cannot take any further part in the game but he can be replaced by a substitute after two minutes.
Refereeing is entirely different. For a start there are two referees, the referee and the second referee. They patrol either side of the pitch and both have a whistle and can
make decisions and caution and send off players. Should there be any dispute, the referee’s decision is final. There is also a timekeeper, which is important as the clock is stopped every time the ball goes out of play or play is stopped. The two halves are twenty minutes each but the international I watched lasted about forty minutes each half, with all the stoppages.
Earlier this season I qualified as a Futsal referee instructor. This means I can not only train referees to
take Futsal games but also train non-referees to become Futsal referees. The problem is, of course, finding any teams in the area who play Futsal. This is one part of the country where Futsal doesn’t seem to be growing at all.
Dick Sawdon Smith
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© R Sawdon Smith 2008