‘For FIFA, futsal has gone from being a sport to being a tool’

The drift of futsal is yet another page in the decadence to which national and international bodies are leading it. 

In Spain, since Luis Rubiales' RFEF took over from Javier Lozano's LNFS, the sport has been ostracised, with little impact on television and without the fans knowing where and how they can watch their team. 

FIFA has been managing futsal for 30 years. Nobody better than Lozano to remember the impact of that: ‘30 years ago there were misgivings about FIFA's intention with futsal, but they quickly demonstrated that they were looking for progress, (albeit at their own pace). They surrounded themselves with FIFA employees who loved the sport and with experts in our sport, to whom they listened. What was originally a first-class endorsement to give lustre to a tournament in a divided sport has now become a burden for the world's top body, which underestimates it to the point of not knowing the product and making the simplest decision to promote it: football. 

Lozano goes deeper into this reflection: ‘Since the arrival of Gianni Infantino as president, everything has changed. We have gone from being a sport within FIFA to being a tool. From feeling respected, to being ignored, if not despised. From being something small, but authentic, to being a test tube where new experiments are tried out with the aim of improving football, but never futsal. In short, to being the stewards of a lord’. 

Someone who has won two World Cups and has been involved with FIFA for 21 years knows what he is talking about to the point of going down the ladder and finding more people responsible and more answers to that poster: ‘The poster doesn't deceive. The current FIFA, with Arsene Wenger as technical director, sees futsal only as a development tool for football players. In fact, in the past, the Technical Study Group analysed tactics, strategies and new trends in the game. They worked for the improvement of futsal, not football. 

Behind the poster that has put futsal in the spotlight, we can find the reason for FIFA to caricature Messi, Neymar, Cristiano and Xavi Hernandez instead of Falcao, Ricardinho or Sergio Lozano as the sport's benchmarks. 

The Futsal World Cup to be held in Uzbekistan from 14 September 2024 is an absolute blunder on the part of FIFA, which has shown that it does not know what it is organising. Taking it to a remote Eastern European country, where hardly any fans will travel, already raises suspicions as to what could have led to this decision. 

Money and the need for the host team to go far may be good reasons for FIFA. Uzbekistan have spared no resources, although they have not used the wild card of player nationalisations, but have put in charge of their national team José Venancio López, the former Spain coach who, however, was never able to lift a World Cup despite the RFEF altering his references and placing him in a World Cup when he had to give talks all over the world. 

Kike Boned has won two World Cups with Spain and in 2009 was named best futsal player in the world. He is surprised by the FIFA poster, ‘Some of us have been calling for a long time for greater respect for our sport and denouncing the drift that it has unfortunately been taking in recent years. The World Cup poster, being absolutely unacceptable, is nothing more than an anecdote that makes us look at the finger while it diverts our attention from the Moon’. 

Second reaction and second reflection that goes beyond the controversy of the moment. Boned also calls for respect for a sport that missed out on the chance to become an Olympic sport and that now finds it very difficult to be taken into account. Living in the shadow of football has become a poisoned fruit. 

‘The poster corresponds to the level of mediocrity of the leaders of futsal in FIFA, reminding us that we are incompetent to generate fans and business on our own,’ explains Jesús Candelas, coach of the best Inter Movistar in history, and wonders if FIFA “means that futsal has helped to develop these and other football stars”. 

And another thought we hadn't realised, ‘FIFA, in 35 years of managing and organising futsal, has not wanted or has not been able to organise a World Cup for minor categories? 35 years later it decided to organise a women's World Cup. I think their desire was always to stagnate, to control, to prevent the growth and development of futsal. No sport grows without filling the halls and the example is the attendance of spectators at the last World Cups and that is the responsibility of the organising country and FIFA. The media are not interested in the cold air in the stands,’ says Candelas. 

And he is not wrong, in Spain the World Cup will be shown on Teledeporte and some other matches on the RTVE website, although fans can follow all the matches on the FIFA application free of charge. This is not good news, it is the result of the lack of interest of the operators because nobody has known how to sell them the product. FIFA is paying for the party and thinking about the next event with no other goals than to fulfil minimum services. 

Andreu Linares played in two World Cups and won one, the 2004 World Cup in Taiwan. He also speaks of a ‘very serious’ error on the part of FIFA, but he rescues the promotional posters of Taiwan and Brazil (2008), the two World Cups he played in, to draw attention to the absence of players. Not that FIFA and those countries produced a historic proclamation either, but they put the spotlight on futsal with a blue track in the case of Brazil on a yellow background and a giant futsal ball in the middle of the typical Asian constructions. 

The FIFA poster has upset the world of futsal. Some have raised their voices before and others after, few have kept quiet and if they have done so, it has been in order not to bother and in the hope of warming a chair in the future. Clientelism, another evil that has crumbled the walls of a sport that has had a hard time growing.

In Spain, the RFEF is FIFA's mirror image of the sport. Just a handful of workers who know futsal and can make it grow, surrounded by others who have come to office in the shadow of power. In this case there are no promotional posters, because there is nothing. Cover the dossier, get the matches out, organise the clandestine Spanish Cup and then move on. 

Jesús Candelas rounds off this investigation into a controversial poster with a quote from Shirley Chishol: ‘If they won't give you a seat at the table, bring a folding chair’.