Denison Cabral, former US National Futsal Team player and indoor star, bringing 10 academy teams to Kansas City

   Denison Cabral, the former U.S. National Futsal Team player and Major Indoor Soccer League star, plans to bring 10 teams to next month’s U.S. Youth Futsal National Championship in Kansas City.

   Cabral, the owner of a futsal academy in Baltimore, has been to the USYF tournament before and said he appreciates the steps organizers have taken to develop futsal in this country.

   “I think that they have a good long-term plan for futsal,” said Cabral, 37. “They’re creating a lot of good opportunities for youth and now they’re under one roof. I see a lot of potential for Super F.”

   USYF, which rebranded this year Super F League, is holding its national event at the Overland Park (Kan.) Convention Center in suburban Kansas City Feb. 18-20. For the first time, the tournament will played over three days with six international-sized futsal courts under one roof.

   It’s the only national futsal event affiliated with U.S. Soccer.

   Cabral is one of many Brazilians who has settled in the U.S. and worked to establish futsal here. He and several other Brazilians work together as trainers for youth players at his Baltimore academy, from which he forms competitive teams.

Cabral started with six academy teams and now has 20 for players ages 9 to 19. Ten or so of those teams will travel to Kansas City for next month’s tournament.

   Cabral’s connection with his native Brazil is still strong and the country’s futsal heritage is something he shares with the players he coaches. He took one of his teams, a group of U-14 girls, to Brazil for nine days.

   “We had seven days of training and then two days of playing,” Cabral said. The team finished second in the tournament.

Another link Cabral maintains with his native country is a manager’s contract with a first-division Brazilian futsal team. His job, he said, is to recruit adult players in the U.S. to represent the club at tournaments in Asia.

   “I’m the contact in this country for the league,” he said. “I have a group of guys here in the U.S., all Brazilians.”

The team competed in April at the ESPN Tiger Street Football competition. Played 5v5 on a futsal court, the game uses a variation of standard futsal rules. Games were played in Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam and Thailand, which will host the FIFA Futsal World Cup.

   During his futsal career, Cabral represented the U.S. at the Pan American Games in 2007 and the World Cup in 2009.

He said he has seen the U.S. National Futsal Team stand still while other countries in CONCACAF -- Confederation of North, Central American and Caribbean Association Football ­– have progressed. Some, like Guatemala, have professional leagues to develop players while the U.S. depends on the efforts of youth organizations like USYF to grow the game.

   “It’s going a little too slow,” Cabral said of the pace of development on the national-team level. “So many of the countries are so much more advanced that we are.”

   But the games that will be played in Kansas City next month are a valuable grass-roots contribution to the growth of skillful American players.

   “A lot of what we need to develop better outdoor players is to keep futsal growing,” he said.

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More on Denison Cabral from Wikipedia:

   Denison Cabral (born January 26, 1974 in Florianópolis, Brazil) is a soccer midfielder. He most recently played for the Baltimore Blast indoor soccer team, during the 2009-10 season.

   Cabral was playing futsal in his native Brazil when recruited by a Brazilian agent to do so in the U.S as an 18/19 year old. Misrepresented by the agent, he nevertheless played futsal in Florida when a tryout for Continental Indoor Soccer League outfit Washington Warthogs came along and he made the club. From there he was recruited by the USISL's Baltimore Bays to play outdoor soccer, which he did for the summers of 1995 and 1996.

   Considered to be the face of the franchise (a billboard on the 1st Mariner Arena shows him on a team advertisement), Cabral is the all-time leading point scorer in Baltimore’s franchise history with 709 points.

   In 2006, Cabral became the coach for the boys' varsity soccer team at St. Mary's High School in Annapolis, Maryland. Also in 2006, Denison started the Denison Cabral Futsal Academy currently located at the MD Sportsplex in Millersville, MD.

   In May 2006, he became a naturalized American citizen.