Already Bursting at the Seams, USYF's Kansas City League Adds New Facility

Having well over 300 teams already registered, Kansas City's flagship USYF league had a decision to make. Interest in being part of the winter 2012-13 league was still high, so coordinator Wes Crape went to work.

The Fieldhouse of Kansas City offers a wooden surface and a bright, modern facility.

With the maximum number of teams already signed up and registration closed, the league negotiated for additional court time with The Fieldhouse of Kansas City, located in Overland Park. The facility, previously used largely for basketball, was in position to provide slots for teams that hoped to play this winter.

Futsal KC and the facility reached an agreement.

As a result, USYF Kansas City league reopened registration and is well on its way to approaching, even surpassing, 400 teams for a single session. No USYF league or futsal league of any kind has posted those kind of numbers.

The league now uses four facilities -- Mid-America West Complex, Roeland Park Sports Dome, The Fieldhouse and the New Century Fieldhouse, which the league added last year. New Century Fieldhouse in Gardner, Kan., will be the site of this winter's Youth Futsal National Championships and offers seven courts at one site.

-- David Knopf, Futsal World Editor

With his USYF mates in tow, New Hampshire Owner Strikes Futsal Gold in Spain

By David Knopf, Futsal World Editor

davidknopf48@gmail.com

Tom Bellen, 42, lives in a town of around 25,000 people in a state with 1.3 million. While there were enough rooftops to ensure the success of Futsal New Hampshire – 60 teams registered for each of two sessions in the first year – Bellen wanted to know more about coaching techniques, development strategies and styles of play.

So he and several other USYF league owners and futsal enthusiasts did something unconventional: They went to Spain.

Tom Bellen

“Frankly there aren’t many people to bounce ideas off of,” he said of a sport that, while quickly growing in popularity, is still relatively new in North America. “Spain we felt was a good step. A great league, good contacts.”

Bellen made the trip with Jon Parry, owner of the Kansas City league and a founder of USYF; Otto Orf, owner of leagues in Ohio; Soorena Farboodmanesh, director of officials, Massachusetts Futsal Association; Ty Stauffer and Chris Booker from the SportsTutor program in Owensboro, Ky.; and Darby Pope, a futsal enthusiast who sometimes works with Bellen in New Hampshire.

The coaches attended a clinic put on by coaches from Spain’s famed professional league and also attended games at the Super Cup of Spain in A Coruña.

Bellen attended the 2012 US Futsal Nationals in Kansas City in February and met Ivan Pico Martinez, who led a coaches’ clinic the night before tournament play began. Martinez is the coach of Azkar Lugo in the Spanish professional futsal league.

“I met Ivan and when I found out what he was doing, I wanted to get involved,” he said.

In a clinic classroom in Spain (Photo courtesy of Soorena Farboodmanesh).

In Spain, Bellen and the other U.S. futsal enthusiasts learned about all phases of the game – formations, patterns of play, rotations – and how Azkar Lugo tries to build its first-division team through its youth academy. 

The emphasis, Martinez said, is on technical development at the younger ages with tactical training coming later.

Bellen said that Martinez brought in academy coaches and the team’s goalkeeping coach to supplement his own lectures at the clinic.

“They kept it simple enough that not a lot was lost in translation,” he said.

“The other reason I wanted to go there is that in this country there’s no licensing (for futsal coaches). Maybe we build this relationship and have these guys come over here and do some more, maybe give some clinics before the national tournament, even travel around the country.”

Bellen, left, and the other American futsal enthusiasts in Spain. (Soorena Faboodmanesh photo).

While futsal is growing in importance in soccer-development circles in North America, Bellen said the game is deeply imbedded in Spanish culture.

“In Spain, the kids learn it so early,” he said. “Everywhere you go you see outdoor futsal courts with the lines, goals, everything.”

At home, Bellen said he and his Brazilian coaching partner, Bruno Victal, have found success in building a futsal league, as well as an assortment of clinics and training activities. His enthusiasm for the game began almost a decade ago when he adapted futsal techniques to training an outdoor team.

“I’m a strong believer in futsal,” he said. “I picked it up about nine years ago with one of the teams I was coaching. I loved it, the parents loved it, the kids loved it.”

Bellen, an auditor for a health care company, played soccer through high school but a serious knee injury derailed his career. He plays adult soccer now, but his emphasis is on coaching and running Futsal New Hampshire and skills clinics.

The leagues and clinics Bellen has offered in New Hampshire have been popular.

He and Victal have organized combination soccer/futsal camps, overnights, even a summer Futsal League Brazil where players are placed on teams and encouraged to develop the imagination and confidence to attempt things they might not during the regular season.

“It was to promote creativity,” he said. “It was interesting to see the difference between the beginning and the end of the season.”

Coming from a relatively small state that competes with more heavily populated ones in regional competition, Bellen said he turned to futsal to give his teams a technical edge.

“We’re New Hampshire and we’re small, so when we go to regionals we get our butts whipped,” he said. “I think part of it is the lack of creativity and the lack of goal-scorers.”

There is so much emphasis on team play, shape and passing patterns that the American outdoor game at times seems mechanical and predictable. Coaches often discourage players from trying to take people on, preferring that they pass.

“I think there’s almost a taboo against individuality and creativity,” Bellen said.

Bellen and Victal are doing their small part to change that in New Hampshire, where their 60-team futsal league is already in several cities and looking to expand into Dover, a coastal area, and their skills programs and camps are well received.

“It’s becoming popular,” Bellen said. “Everything we do is like gold. (USYF Director of Development) John Sciore and Jon Parry were thrilled that we got that many teams the first time.”

Have a story idea or comment? Contact the editor at davidknopf48@gmail.com.

Sizzling Hot Links from the Futsal Griddle

LUCAS STAUFFER, the 17-year-old chosen for the U.S. National Futsal Team's CONCACAF qualifer, traveled to the Netherlands in August to investigate his opportunities at professional clubs. Travis Clark has the story at topdrawersoccer.com. Stauffer was the subject of a feature in June in the Futsal World newsletter.

http://www.topdrawersoccer.com/club-soccer-articles/teenage-futsal-star-gets-european-experience_aid25908

TOO OLD, you say? At 45, Kazuyoshi Miura has been invited to play for Japan in Thailand. The player, known as King Kazu by fans in the J League, plays in the second division of Japan's professional league.

http://ajw.asahi.com/article/sports/soccer/AJ201209030114

IN AN IN-DEPTH INTERVIEW with Tony Lepore, scouting director for the U.S Development Academy, Soccer America writer Mike Woitella discusses the role of futsal in the development of young American players.

http://www.socceramerica.com/article/48039/us-academy-goes-younger-futsal-in-the-plans.html

ENGLAND is in a stage of rebirth in its national soccer programs, and its growing Futsal Fives League announced recently that it has expanded into a new area. Futsal Fives is now a sport offering in Royston, located 43 miles north of London in the county of Hertfordshire.

http://www.royston-crow.co.uk/sport/football/futsal_fives_league_coming_to_royston_1_1520281

CHARLOTTE newspaper features United States Youth Futsal affiliate F5 Futsal. Columnist Reid Creager wrote about Barefoot Futsal and its innovative training programs in the Charlotte Observer's South Charlotte section. Futsal World featured the innovative programs of Head instructor Guillermo Uribe and lead instructor Paul Roderique in the September newsletter.

Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/21/3539278/looks-like-soccer-but-its-futsal.html#storylink=cpy

http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2012/09/21/3539278/looks-like-soccer-but-its-futsal.html

HAS THERE EVER BEEN a world championship without an uproar over whether facilities would be completed in time? That's the case in Bankok, Thailland, where construction progress advances on a futsal arena for the upcoming world cup.

http://www.fifa.com/futsalworldcup/news/newsid=1707333/

'Finding the Game": While futsal's not directly mentioned, it's often implied

By David Knopf

Futsal World Editor

Gwendolyn Oxenham

There is no mention of the word futsal in Gwendolyn Oxenham’s book “Finding the Game.” Nor does she refer to futebol de salão, el fútbol sala, fútbol de salón, microfutbol or mini-soccer, all variations of futsal, the word we use in North America and the term FIFA and U.S. Soccer use to describe the smaller variation of the formal 11v11 outdoor game.

But in reading Oxenham’s book, an intimate description of the filming of “Pelada” – subtitled “Three Years, Twenty-five Countries and the Search for Pickup Soccer” – the unlabeled references to what we call futsal were plentiful.

In visiting Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Bolivia, Kenya, France, Iran, Palestine and the others, Oxenham and her three American filmmaking companions search for “pelada,” a word Brazilians use to describe the game as “naked” – a spontaneous sport played with passion and imagination without organized trappings such as uniforms, referees, spectators, standings and the like.

In America, we would refer to it as pickup soccer or a kick-around. As the four Americans find, every country has “pelada” and its own word to describe it.

A person unfamiliar with futsal and the fascination with dribbling “tricks” it has spawned, wouldn’t see the connections with “pelada”. But for me, the overlap with futsal was obvious, even if Oxenham doesn’t use the word.

Most striking, is how much informal soccer the filmmakers find that’s played on pavement. There are formal courts, including one on the roof of a Tokyo skyscraper where businessmen (and, we presume, businesswomen) play pickup games after work. But many of the games Oxenham and her friends find are played are hard-surfaced streets and alleys.

In watching trailer videos for the movie “Pelada” (see the links below), on these surfaces the ball is played flat on the ground, with little bounce. Either the players are exceptional or the balls are of the low-bounce variety we use for futsal.

Oxenham, a former Duke University women’s player who played a year of professional soccer with the Brazilian club Santos, often writes about the intense pressure in these games, where decisions are made quickly and, more often than not, the escape routes are either a quick one-two or a cheeky move to regain some space.

Oxenham and her boyfriend Luke, a former Notre Dame player, encounter an adolescent Brazilian girl who’s referred to as Ronaldinha. Her nickname is the feminine variant of Ronaldinho, the country’s magnificent men’s player who, like many Brazilians, grew up playing futsal.

This is how the girl, 13, is described in the book:

“We all see the kid at the same time and go silent. We stare at the tiny blur who’s toying with the ball, laughing every time she dribbles by someone as though she’s just pulled off a fantastic joke.”

Oxenham’s description is of the girl’s inventive skill and speed, but also of her passion and the joy she finds in the game. If there’s a message here, it’s that she comes from a poor family in a “favela,” one of the most dangerous parts of the city, an area governed by drug dealers. Her house, Oxenham says, is “the size of a garden shed.” The street address is spray-painted on a wall.

When the filmmaking team watches her play, Ronaldinho’s mother says, “My daughter is poor. If she rises, it is out of nothing … she wants this and I want it for her. I’m behind her no matter what.”

Whoever reads “Finding the Game” will see something different, come away with personal conclusions. Aside from the unlabeled references to futsal, what struck me in this collection of extremely well-written, vivid stories is that love for the game and the opportunities it provides – self-expression, creativity, joy and teamwork – is everywhere. But it is nowhere more passionate than in the poorest areas.

With the hard, fast surface and often a low-bounce ball, the game is futsal no matter what it's called.

In Brazil, for example, the filmmakers come across a street that is blocked off and labeled by a sign that says “Ruia de Lazer.” Oxenham’s boyfriend speaks Portuguese and translates it as “Street of Leisure”. It’s basically a pick-up game played in the street by barefooted children, one in which a net hangs poorly attached from a small goal.

This is “pelada” at its core.

In Africa, the filmmakers who encounter children who stitch together their own futsal-like balls, balls smaller even than a children’s-size No. 3. Oxenham describes the balls as very dense and not given to bounce much.

Again, I see futsal and how it evolved from pick-up games played on hard surfaces in places too poor to have the manicured parks and complexes we enjoy in North America.

“Finding the Game” (2012, St. Martin’s Press) is a fascinating book, viewed through a futsal prism or any other. Oxenham understands the game, feels its passion and writes with a clarity befitting her master of fine arts degree in writing from Notre Dame. According to the liner notes, she teaches English and “plays in pickup games in Southern California.”

If it’s on a hard surface, it might well be futsal or a close relative.

To view the trailer for “Pelada,” click on these links:

Short version

http://vimeo.com/9869545

Longer version

http://vimeo.com/3885949

You can write the editor at davidknopf48@gmail.com. David started the first organized futsal league in Missouri and still coaches outdoor soccer and futsal.