Europe’s pioneers embrace the art of ‘total futsal’ again

Futsal: The Story of an Indoor Football Revolution - Foto: Jamie Fahey

The Dutch canvas is blank again. Another stirring bout of creative passion and street-style artistry beckons as the 2022 Uefa men’s futsal championship kicks off in the Netherlands.

“Holland as a pioneer,” sang the headline 33 years ago, in January 1989, reflecting on another historic futsal moment: the inaugural Fifa world championship. The tournament report lauded the Dutch hosts, whose team dazzled to the final only to be edged out by Brazil.

The Dutch influence on the small-sided game in Europe started even earlier, however.

As an early adopter of the sport born in 1930 in the YMCA halls of Uruguay and raised and nourished in Brazil as “esporte da bola pesada” (sport of the heavy ball), the Netherlands first unveiled a blank canvas for what it calls “zaalvoetbal” (indoor football) in 1982.

Vic Hermans signalled his intent to adorn the sport for a generation as player and coach with brutally artistic flourishes, netting a hat-trick as the Netherlands defeated Spain 7-3 in a novel four-nations event in Leiden seen as an early iteration of the Euros. Belgium edged Italy for third place. Later that year the Dutch and Italians also competed in the first Fifusa world championships in São Paulo.

The Netherlands took part in eight of the 13 subsequent four-nations jousts before competing in Uefa’s first partial embrace of the game, a six-team 1996 tournament in Córdoba, Spain, also featuring Italy, Belgium, Russia, Ukraine and the hosts. Andy Roxburgh, Uefa technical director at the time, said he was left in no doubt about “the value of futsal as a spectacle” after watching Javier Lozano’s Spain take the title in a breathless final starring Brazil-born Spanish sensation Paulo “Maravilla” Roberto and the Russian goalscoring pivot Konstantin “the Tsar” Eremenko.

Three years later came the inaugural full Uefa championship. Russia got revenge this time, Eremenko topping the scoring charts again. For the Dutch, goalscorers Pascal Langenhuijsen and Henny Lettinck joined the iconic John de Bever and Hermans – who was player of the tournament in the 1989 Fifa world championships – in the pantheon of Dutch futsal stars.

So back in 1989, the decision to go Dutch was a celebration of the growing movement in what Fifa still called “five-a-side football”, the South Americans revered as “futebol de salão” and the Spanish named “fútbol sala” – but was fast becoming the high-speed chess with a ball known as 21st-century futsal.

Also burning bright orange back then was the legacy of the legendary Ajax and Dutch national team’s “total football”, the joyful 11-a-side swagger of peerless Dutch masters Rinus Michels, Johan Cruyff, Johnny Rep and Ruud Krol. Marco van Basten and Ruud Gullit fired Michels’ new generation to European glory a year earlier at the 1988 football Euros.

This unprecedented game intelligence, mastery of space and beguiling blend of strict team ethos, positional fluidity and individual freedom offers a stark parallel with futsal in the age of tactical innovation triggered by the revolutionary 4-0 formation principles imported to Europe in the 1980s by the legendary Brazilian coach Zego. The “total futsal” revolution was under way too.

The Netherlands was on the ball.

“Every week, more than 250,000 boys, girls, men and women enjoy playing it here,” wrote Jo van Marle, chair of the Dutch FA, in a summary in the tournament report also celebrating the KNVB’s centenary year.

And just like today, futsal offered hope. In the 1989 report lauding the Dutch “pioneers”, Sepp Blatter, FIFA general secretary at the time, noted futsal’s potential. It was “one of the duties of football” to lead players indoors to replace the lost art of street football culture, he warned.

This case is even more compelling today.

It’s one I make with conviction in Futsal: The Story of an Indoor Football Revolution, my book chronicling the global game’s history and culture, written from my perspective growing up on a diet of street football and five-a-side in Liverpool, England, in the 1970s and 80s.

In 2022, the canvas to be adorned with splashes of high-speed collaborative artistry is bigger than ever. Expanded to 16 teams with a four-year interval for the first time, Euro 2022 is the the most competitive continental championship in futsal (comprising six of the world’s top 10 teams: Spain, Portugal, Russia, Kazakhstan, Italy and Croatia).

It’s also a huge year for UEFA, with the men’s and women’s Euros, the u19s men’s competition and the men’s Champions League in the same year for the first time.

But what of the home team’s chances? For a squad wholly comprising part-time players, it's a huge challenge to try to repeat the exploits of the first Fifa world championship in 1989, when Marcel Loosveld – head coach the last time the Dutch made the Euros in 2014 – scored in the creditable 2-1 final defeat. But under the tutelage of the 78-cap former national team player Max Tjaden, who once described himself as “a mini-mini-mini Louis Van Gaal”, the players are certain to rise to the occasion. The game nous of veterans Mohamed Attaibi and Jamal El Ghannouti – over 250 games and nearly 100 goals between them – will prove vital if they are to come through a tough group A comprising Serbia, Ukraine and the holders, Portugal. 

Whatever happens in group A, this tournament can confirm the Dutch as a true “pioneer” of European futsal with a reputation for adorning the 40m x 20m canvas with decorative splashes of breathtaking “total futsal”.

Coming next: the futsal artists seeking to make history at UEFA Futsal Euro 2022