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A lot like soccer and a little bit like basketball, futsal is having its moment in the Bay Area, as athletes from the Peninsula are making it to the world stage to compete in a sport known for its quick pace and technical footwork.
The U.S. Futsal Federation has just sent a delegation of its top youth players to compete in the International Futsal Alliance World Championship in Malaysia, which kicked off on Monday, Aug. 18.
The tournament is a milestone for the athletes who are part of the U16 U.S. Futsal National Select Teams. It’s an opportunity to showcase their skills in a sport that has a massive international following, yet remains not very well known in the U.S.
Alex Para, U.S. Futsal Federation president and CEO, has been working to change that, promoting the sport to make it more visible and accessible to American youth.
Futsal, which commonly translates as “indoor soccer,” has long been associated with South American countries like Argentina and Brazil. It got its official start in the U.S. in 1981, but it was so obscure that for a long time Americans didn’t even know how to spell its name, Para said.
Futsal has grown since its early days, with about 150,000 players and about 5,000 to 6,000 teams in the U.S. today. The sport typically draws comparisons to soccer, but there is some crossover with basketball too, Para said.
Like soccer, it’s a foot game but played on a smaller scale, typically on an indoor basketball court, with five players to a side. The ball is smaller and doesn’t have as much bounce as a soccer ball, and the goals are smaller too.
For many players, the attraction of the game is the opportunity to interact a lot with the ball, more so than soccer. There also is a lot of switching back and forth between offense and defense, making the tempo more like basketball, Para said.
In Latin American countries, kids start playing futsal at a very young age, even before they think about soccer, according to Para. “Because you touch the ball eight times more per unit time than you do in outdoor soccer, you improve eight times faster,” he said, adding that it has contributed immensely to the caliber of soccer players in these countries.
In the U.S. it’s different, as most kids start playing soccer and then pick up futsal later, often as teenagers. Still, they benefit from the sport’s emphasis on technique and precision – skills that transfer over to the soccer pitch, Para said.
This was the case for Andy Comsa, a sophomore at Palo Alto High School, who is playing in the tournament in Malaysia this week. Like several of his teammates, Comsa plays for a local team, World United Futsal Academy (WUFA) in Palo Alto.
Comsa was attracted to futsal about four years ago to improve his soccer game, and quickly took to its fast pace and emphasis on technique. His skills skyrocketed, according to his father, who noted that Comsa rose to be one of the top players on his soccer team after regularly playing futsal for WUFA.
WUFA is one of the oldest futsal clubs in the country and is closely associated with its founder and head coach, Vava Marques, who used to play professionally in Brazil.
For Marques, who also coaches soccer, the transition between the two sports is seamless, and in the Bay Area, futsal has developed enough recognition that even spectators can tell when a soccer player has that training, he said.
Spectators used to attribute the skills of good soccer players to their cultural heritage, especially if they came from Latin American countries, Marques said. Now when they see a kid playing soccer with a lot of technical proficiency, they attribute it to futsal, he laughed.
Still, while futsal has made inroads in the Bay Area, teams often struggle for access to facilities. Space is limited because of competition from more popular sports, like basketball and volleyball. “I have to do magic,” Marques said, referring to the difficulty of booking courts.
Similarly, Para described a lack of facilities as a challenge for futsal teams, but noted that it’s a relatively easy sport to launch because it doesn’t require a lot of space or players when compared to soccer.
It’s also a sport that develops a strong sense of camaraderie and has been particularly appealing for girls, Para said. In soccer, the gender ratio is about 60% boys and 40% girls whereas the split is more even in futsal with about 52% boys and 48% girls playing it, he said.
The next push to popularize futsal is to bring it to the level of collegiate sports, Para said. But already it’s gaining some traction, at least among soccer players in the Bay Area. Soccer clubs are doing more to incorporate futsal into their programs, Marques said, or at least acknowledge it on their websites.
“Now, if you don’t do futsal you’re staying behind. You don’t want to miss the boat on that one,” he said.
