City Futsal Leader Reflects on Value of USYF Summit

To the Editor:

Manuel Mariel

The 2013 USYF summit was an honor to be a part of and an opportunity for City Futsal to help promote the beautiful game of futsal. 

All the big futsal organizations were there from across the USA, in one place at the same time, trying to figure the best direction and mission to take futsal. 

It is time to take futsal to the next level in the development of youth soccer here in the United States. The summit has given us a better collective direction in terms of everyone being on the same page within each of our organizations.

We think it is important that we as a group have the same ending goal and

that we are able to create a network of futsal organizations across the

country, this will enable us to share ideas, create a U.S. Youth Futsal curriculum

and expose players within a different format where skill and creativity rule

the game.

It was comforting to see that every organization had similar

success stories and even similar problems, so that we could share and help

each organization, making us all stronger together.

Estaban Mariel

Now it is time to roll up our sleeves and get to work, because the next chapter will bring more success stories and more problems for us to solve as team. We consider ourselves pioneers setting the path up for the new generation of US soccer players and hopefully US Futsalers. 

-- Manuel Mariel, manuel@cityfutsal.com

Editor's note: Manuel (top photo) and his twin brother Estaban founded City Futsal in

Dallas in 2011. It is one of the largest of the USYF affiliates with more than 200 teams. The brothers attended the 2013 Futsal Summit and will serve as directors of a region in the newly formed USYF national program under technical director Keith Tozer.