Big Futsal tourney for TT

Trinidad and Tobago will soon be entering a World Cup journey of  another kind as we prepare  to host the Caribbean leg of the CONCACAF Futsal World Cup qualifying series.

Futsal which is the five a side indoor version to football,  is now being played by  countries in other parts of the world and has began to grow in popularity in CONCACAF. It  has been given a tremendous boost in the region according to CONCACAF President Jack Warner who announced this week that some 13 countries from the Caribbean will go into a qualifying tournament. In September, the FIFA Development Office at the Centre of Excellence, staged a FIFA course for Futsal at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine. The course was  delivered by FIFA instructors Nico Spreij of Holland (Coaching) and Perry Gautier of Belgium (Refereeing) and featured 17 coaches and 14 referees from 15 English and Dutch speaking Caribbean National Associations.

Futsal is steadily improving its global profile but in the Caribbean the growth of the game has been limited to the Dutch and Spanish speaking countries. Cuba, in particular, has a vibrant National Association programmes and have participated in the last two FIFA World Championships. Ultimately the aim is to increase the number of Caribbean national associations participating in the CONCACAF qualification tournament planned for next April, where two teams will advance to the 2004 FIFA Futsal World Championship to be held in Chinese Taipei. CONCACAF have staged two Futsal qualifiers for the FIFA World Championships in 1996 and 2000. Six teams participated in 1996 CONCACAF event in Guatemala that was won by the United States. Eight teams took part in the 2000 finals in Costa Rica in which Cuba finished second.

Commenting on the course held in Trinidad, Gautier said: “We set out to convince participants of the need to promote working methods in their respective countries, as well as strengthening their ties with FIFA for the further development of Futsal. “To do that, we discussed the work programme used in countries which perform well in the discipline, as well as providing participants with the necessary materials: Adidas kit, the official Laws of the Game and the coaching manual. “We were able to divide classes between theory and practice, thanks to the fact that the facilities at the CONCACAF Centre of Excellence and the pitches at the University of the West Indies, St Augustine were kindly made available to us,” explained Spreij, a former Dutch national coach.

The Trinidad and Tobago Football Federation is in the process of finalising ways of selecting players to form a national team by staging tournaments to be played among local teams. Keith Look Loy of the FIFA Development Office in Port-of-Spain said Futsal is taking off in the entire CONCACAF region.  “There are now 21 teams who want to take part in the qualifying tournament, and that was one of the aims of the courses we organised. Don’t forget many of these teams will be making their debuts in the discipline,” said Look Loy.