A Uruguayan PE teacher built futsal from five other sports' rulebooks
In 1930, Montevideo physical education teacher Juan Carlos Ceriani wanted a football game YMCAs could play indoors. He borrowed team size and match length from basketball, goalkeeping from water polo, substitutions from hockey and court and goal dimensions from handball, then kept football's one great rule: no hands.
The timing made sense. Uruguay had just won Olympic football gold in 1924 and 1928 and then the first World Cup in 1930, and the sport's popularity was surging. Ceriani's game, first played on basketball courts, got a published rulebook in September 1933. The YMCA carried it across South America, where it appealed as an easier, less punishing game that athletes from other sports could use to stay fit all year. In Brazil, João Lotufo adapted it for physical education, and in 1956 the São Paulo YMCA revised the rules so older players could compete.
Today a match pits two teams of five, including a goalkeeper, against each other for two halves of 20 minutes, usually indoors on a hard court with a smaller, heavier ball than in football. Tight spaces reward close control and quick passing, which is why coaches use it to train footballers. It is most popular in South America and on the Iberian Peninsula, where many teams are professional.
The name caused a turf war. The words come from Portuguese futebol de salão and Spanish fútbol sala, both meaning hall football. When the international federation FIFUSA staged its second world championship in Madrid in 1985, FIFA tried to stop it using the word football at all, even in Spanish. Futsal, a coinage that also appealed to the US Minisoccer Federation because it contained the letters USA, became the neutral solution, and FIFA adopted it for its 1996 World Cup in Spain.
FIFUSA held its first world championship in São Paulo in 1982, but most national bodies drifted to FIFA from the early 1990s. In 2002 FIFUSA regrouped as the World Futsal Association, based in Asunción, Paraguay, and still runs its own version of the game.
Source: Futsal
