Premier Futsal League ropes Virat in
Current favorite Virat Kohli is roped in as the brand ambassador of the recently-launched Premier Futsal football league. Virat Kohli said that he is excited to be a part of the sport he grew up playing, and motivated to contribute positively to its development. Premier Futsal Chairman, Xavier Britto, stated that Virat could attract Indian youth and elevate the standard of futsal in India.
What is futsal?
Futsal, the shorter indoor version of football, was first played in 1930 in Uruguay. In futsal, both the playing teams have five players each instead of 11. Each futsal game is split into two halves of 20 minutes each with one timeout per half. Another major difference is that unlike football, there is no offside rule in futsal, and unlimited player substitutions are allowed.
Premier Futsal League announced in India
Futsal had become the latest sport in India to have a league type tournament as Luis Figo, Real Madrid FC, and Portuguese football player, had launched Premier Futsal League. The PFL would organize the country's first ever multi-national futsal league. Balu Nayar, who had designed IPL cricket tournament, had launched PFL along with Indev Logistics. He said that the tournament drew inspiration from IPL.
Fast-paced sport to grab the audience
Xavier Britto, Chairman-PFL and Chairman & MD-Indev Logistics stated, "Given the fast-paced all-action nature of the sport and its short duration, we are confident that Premier Futsal will capture the imagination of TV audience as well as fans in stadia."
Premier Futsal League to takeoff in mid-July
India's first franchise-based futsal league would be played across 8 Indian cities from 15-24 July 2016. Around 56 international futsalers would participate and each team would have 12 players, and mandatorily consist of three international futsal players, one Indian, and one international marquee soccer player. PFL would be governed by Futsal Association of India (FAI) with accreditation from the Asociación Mundial de Futsal (AMF).
Talent search programs in all 8 cities
Teams from Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Hyderabad and Goa would take part in the league. PFL would conduct talent search programs across all eight cities to choose 5 regional players out of 2500 from each city.
A day after the PFL was announced; FIFA slammed PFL and stated in a letter to the All India Football Federation that the league was not sanctioned by them. Jaime Yarza-Head of FIFA Events wrote a letter to AIFF expressing concerns over the league organized by a non-affiliated group. However, Balu Nayar, Executive Director-PFL, said that PFL could exist under AMF independent of FIFA.
AMF and FIFA, independent of each other
AMF-Asociacion Mundial de Futsal is a futsal body that was established in 1971 as FIFUSA-Asociacion Mundial de Futbol de Salon. FIFA and AMF conduct events or tournaments separately. FIFA entered futsal much later than AMF, at the end of the 1980s.
