Girls and Ladies — Now it’s time to play Futsal!

An education feature making the case for futsal as a format for girls and women. Gemma Smith, girls and women’s futsal co-ordinator for the @Futsal Group, reports growth across arenas in Swindon, Cardiff and Birmingham with a northern hub planned for Leeds, and describes the Birmingham arena as the largest in Europe. It hosts a monthly British Colleges Sport girls’ league with more than sixty participants, and Karl Lines of British Colleges Sport explains that a midlands pilot drew an overwhelming response and will be rolled out nationally. A separate ladies’ league runs fourteen teams and around 120 players across two divisions, from novices to internationals. The piece notes FIFA’s finding that players touch the ball 210 per cent more often in futsal, and outlines scholarship programmes for 16 to 19-year-olds.