Futsal is an association football-based game played on a hard court smaller than a football pitch, and mainly indoors. It has similarities to five-a-side football and indoor soccer.

Futsal is played between two teams of five players each, one of whom is the goalkeeper. Unlimited substitutions are permitted. Unlike some other forms of indoor soccer, it is played on a hard court surface marked by lines; walls or boards are not used. It is played with a smaller, harder, lower-bounce ball than football. The surface, ball and rules favour ball control and passing in small spaces. The game emphasizes control, improvisation, creativity and technique.

Origins

Futsal started in 1930 when Juan Carlos Ceriani, a teacher in Montevideo, Uruguay, created a version of indoor football for YMCAs.

Originally developed for basketball courts,[7] a rule book for the new sport was published in September 1933. Association football was already highly popular in the country, and after Uruguay won the 1930 World Cup and gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics, it attracted even more practitioners. Ceriani's goal was to create a team game similar to football that could be played indoors or outdoors.

While writing the rule book, Ceriani combined the principles of association football—where the ball may be touched with every part of the body except the hands—with rules from other sports: from basketball, the number of players (five per team) and the game's duration (40 active minutes); from water polo, the goalkeeping rules; and from team handball, the field and goal sizes.

The YMCA spread the game quickly throughout South America. It was easily played by everyone, everywhere, and in any weather condition, helping players of other sports stay in shape all year round. These reasons convinced João Lotufo, a Brazilian, to bring the game to his country and adapt it to the needs of physical education.

Initially, the rules were not uniform. In 1956, the rules were modified by Habib Maphuz and Luiz Gonzaga de Oliveira Fernandes within the YMCA of São Paulo, Brazil, to allow seniors to compete.[citation needed] Luiz de Oliveira wrote the Book of Rules of Futsal in 1956, then adopted also at the international level.

In 1965, the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol de Salón (South American Futsal Confederation) was formed, consisting of Uruguay, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru and Argentina.

Shortly after, a tournament was organized. It attracted some interest in South American media, which regularly began to follow futsal. In particular, it was the Brazilian journalist José Antônio Inglêz who passionately contributed to the rapid spread of the game, as well as being credited as the man who coined the name "futsal".[8]

The most attended futsal match in history was played on 7 September 2014 on Mane Garrincha Stadium in Brazil's capital Brasilia between Brazil and Argentina in front of 56,483 spectators.