Kieran Shannon: The street is now indoors. Futsal is where Irish football has to go

Ireland used to have a national futsal team, just as we had an U21 futsal national league featuring Seamus Coleman and James McClean. Wes Hoolahan, while still 18 and playing for Belvedere, was a particular standout with some of those national teams in the late 1990s

Ireland's Dane Massey gets his shot on goal despite the attention of Dauren Nurgozhin, Kazakhstan, during the Uefa Futsal Championship qualifying tournament at the National Basketball Arena, Tallaght, in 2009. Picture: Stephen McCarthy / SPORTSFILE

While it seemed a goal he made out of nothing, a trained eye could spot it came from somewhere.

When Mo Salah used the sole of his foot to roll the ball out from under his feet before going about scoring a goal Jurgen Klopp has rightly claimed will be spoken about for decades to come, followers of a certain school of football would have known it as a move straight from futsal.

It’s not a game that everyone, especially here, is familiar with. At about the very moment Salah was jinking past a maze of Manchester City defenders, the men’s futsal World Cup final between eventual winners Portugal and Argentina was kicking off in Lithuania, a fixture and outcome you most likely hadn’t heard a whisper about.

But just because the planet — and even the football world within it — might still not know who Pany Varel is, even after him scoring both of Portugal’s goals in that final, it does not mean that football world is indifferent to futsal and its importance in moulding the best players to ever play football itself.

No doubt you’ve heard of another player who recently scored a couple of goals for Portugal in the one game, a Cristiano Ronaldo, but probably not how influential futsal was in his development.

“During my childhood, all we played was futsal,” he once said. “The small playing area helped me improve my close control and whenever I played futsal, I felt free. If it wasn’t for futsal, I wouldn’t be the player I am.”

Most of the top creative players of the past decade or two have given similar testimonies. Xavi and Iniesta. Messi. Salah, who Brendan Rodgers once described as a footballer still playing futsal. The Brazilian Ronaldo and his compatriots Ronaldinho and Neymar, just like Pele and Zico long before them. In fact Zico, like Coutinho, played futsal exclusively for years before moving up to play 11-a-side on a grass pitch.

Daniel Coyle, in his book, The Talent Code, explained why Brazil was such a hotbed for creative players. Contrary to the popular lazy myth, Brazilian players weren’t moulded from kicking a ball on the beach all day. It was from the tight confines of the futsal courts.

“(Part of its success) lies in the maths. Futsal players touch the ball far more often than soccer players — six times more often per minute, according to a Liverpool University study. The smaller, heavier ball demands and rewards more precise handling — you can’t get out of a tight spot simply by booting the ball downfield. Short passing is paramount: The game is all about looking for angles and spaces and working quick combinations with other players. Ball control and vision are crucial, so that when futsal players play the full-size game, they feel as if they have acres of space in which to operate. As Dr Mirando, a professor of football at the University of Sao Paolo summed it up: ‘No time plus no space equals better skills. Futsal is our national laboratory of improvisation.’”

It would be fair to say that Ireland to date has had no such national laboratory of improvisation, not since the end of street football as Giles and Dunphy knew and loved and lamented. In certain coaching quarters players are frowned upon if they use the sole of their foot to control or caress a ball. And we’re one of only a handful of European countries without a national futsal team.

We used to have one, just as we had an U21 futsal national league featuring Seamus Coleman and James McClean. Wes Hoolahan, while still 18 and playing for Belvedere, was a particular standout with some of those national teams in the late 1990s.

In 2010 an Irish side beat England 2-0 in the National Basketball Arena. But then the association as well as the country itself experienced a financial crisis with the failure of its Vantage club scheme. All futsal programmes were essentially shut down.

Such a decision hasn’t just told on the empty courts. It has told on the field, in the Aviva, and is still telling now. Although Stephen Kenny is attempting to mould an Irish team that plays a more creative, expansive game, we don’t have a Hoolahan to create enough goal chances and another street player in Robbie Keane to take them.

Meanwhile, the rest of Europe and the world is creating more of those kind of players, players who can create a bit of magic on the edge of the box and make or score a goal from there, including against Ireland in the Aviva. We wonder why countries like Azerbaijan, or, if we played them, Kazakhstan are able to get a result against us, not knowing the latter reached the futsal World Cup semi-final last week while the former reached the quarter-finals of the last futsal Euros.

It’s a lot easier and more traditional in this country to question our national team manager than to question our failure to develop players or even have a futsal national team.

There are some signs of change. The FAI have appointed Simon Walsh as national programme co-ordinator for futsal and recreation football.

A Dublin side called Blue Magic participated last August in the preliminary rounds of the Uefa Futsal Champions League. Several counties, especially Clare through FAI games officer Denis Hynes, are championing the game extensively, encouraging schools to host Futsal in the yard and clubs to participate in fortnightly indoor leagues throughout the winter. But it needs to be more widespread, championed, not least with national teams as well as national leagues.

By right we should be a major indoor sporting nation on account of our damp climate.

That isn’t the case currently; even basketball, the biggest of the indoor sports, wouldn’t have the sway or the pull of the big three outdoor sports. But soccer has that draw, and such a child-friendly version of it should be particularly attractive.

In recent years more leagues across the country are played through the summer. Futsal would be the perfect game to keep kids and players ticking over through the winter, that perfect blend of being novel yet familiar.

As we enter a post-Covid era, it is an open goal for Irish football that it has to take. The street is now indoors. It’s where Irish football has to go if it wants to go where it wants.