Outdoor Futsal Stadium

Speaking of futsal, that proposed pro futsal league may have given up the ghost. www.profutsal.com is no longer with us.

Told ya.

 

Excuse me?

You've told us absolutely nothing. Futsal has not yet been given the chance to succeed or fail, and until it has, your so-called point is moot. It's painfully obvious that you have strong bias against it. Nobody thought Arena football would succeed either, but it has, for the most part. It's a niche league like lacrosse, and futsal would probably end up being the same way.

I know you don't like futsal (you've plainly stated that in previous posts), and I know you've worked in A-League circles. But anyone with half a brain knows that a semi-pro league trying to pass itself off as full professional is a fool's errand. The PFL was doomed to fail from the get-go, for the simple reason that it was semi-pro. A league like that would be good after, and only after, a full professional league was formed. You know that as well as I do.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again, the best way to do futsal in this country would either be for USL to revive the I-League and make it a futsal league using A-League teams, have international teams do a barnstorming tour, show European/South American games on TV (Fox Sports/Sports World, Univision/Galavision/Telemundo, ESPN, etc.), or just put together a full pro league, and see who wins the "indoor war," MISL or futsal. That's the only way we'll know for sure. We'll never know until it happens.

 

I saw a night time shot of another Italian outdoor futsal stadium in a "Calcio a 5" magazine that was sent to me. I'd subcribe to it, but I don't know Italian. Bummer.

 

Like you needed to be Karnak to see THAT. What will you tell us next, that it's going to be cold for the next couple of months?

And hey, great idea David - let's turn it all over to Frank Marcos; he needs another revenue stream. Now that he's back from Portugal where he was [strike]hiding from his wife's lawyers[/strike] searching for his soccer roots, he surely needs a quick infusion of cash.

Then maybe we can get Alex Para to stop voting 46 states as his "proxys" because there IS no Futsal organization there, and let some fresh air into THAT dirty little USSF secret.

Whatever happened to the "USYSA is behind Futsal 100%" project anyway? Has US Club Soccer run off with so much of their membership that they don't have the dough anymore, or is it that nobody outside of Kansas City gives a crap?

Futsal is as dead as Caesar in the USA. Hell, Otto Freakin Orf is still the National Team keeper and they're rolling him out there in a Rascal for God's sake.

For better or worse, wallball is the foreseeable future. If they can't even credibly paper the house for Cleveland vs. Milwaukee, how in the hell are you gonna sell a sport nobody even heard of?

 

And that is precicely why we need to do the things I talked about (maybe with the exception of using the I-League as a futsal league--I mentioned that only because it could be a ready-made situation, if you could get them to go for it). You'd need some kind of "big-show" deal to get the ball rolling. The NASL did that with indoor soccer as we know it back in the 70's, and it led to the MISL. The outdoor ISL in the early 60's was a driving force behind the eventual NASL.

You're absolutely right about the organization, or lack thereof, in US Futsal. I'm a state president who has busted his butt for going on nine years, with very limited results (a futsal league in my church). I firmly believe that the days of the "grass-roots effort" are over, and there has to be a "big splash" in order to get things going. People have to know about it in order for there to be a grass roots effort.

There are enough sporting goods companies (Nike, adidas, Select, Brine, etc.) with their finger in the futsal pie to sponsor a national tour of top-class teams in select areas to get the interest up.
That's what they do with beach volleyball, and other lower-tier sports.

I sincerely hope what you say about futsal being "as dead as Caesar" is not true. I know it could work, if it was given half a chance.

 

Okay. Whatever you say.

No. I just think it's boring. If indoor soccer, which is actually exciting to watch, is dying on the vine, good luck getting people to come watch futsal.

I'd say they've done well for themselves. But they're at least a derivative of a popular sport.

The AFL is probably the strongest of the "niche" leagues, with lacrosse behind. Lacrosse is very, very strong in certain markets and has had little success in some others. Futsal wouldn't come close to getting to that niche.

True. And trying to market a sport that has virtually no chance of appealing to the general public is one, as well.

That's one reason, based on what I saw. The folks who were doing it were apparently pretty passionate about it, as you appear to be. But I'm guessing they found little interest in their product, and the current economy could only have so much to do with it.

I don't believe a full professional futsal league would last long enough for a semi-pro league to be formed.

The MISL is not at all a well cat. But if you asked people to choose, there's little question in my mind which one they would choose. While it would be debateable whether the MISL would put a pro futsal league out of business or whether the futsal league could do that all by itself, I wouldn't like futsal's chances regardless. I cannot believe that anyone would sink money into such a venture, or that it would generate enough attention, regardless of how well-promoted it was. Just my opinion. Don't get so defensive.

Not in Key West. You're lucky I like you, smartass. How come you don't get slagged when you diss futsal?

"And what have you learned, Dorothy?" God bless ya for caring so passionately about something, but are you starting to think that maybe it's not going to work?

Good luck with that. I don't agree that it would work. It's not a very attractive game to watch, I think you're going to have a hard time getting kids to play it, and considering the struggles that the recognizable forms of soccer have in this country, I wouldn't be optimistic about there being any type of futsal explosion here anytime soon.

But, of course, that's just my opinion. Your mileage may vary.

 

One thing that I have found is that the people who have tried it "do" like it (BTW--the kids I've seen and coached love it). I have said before that I think futsal has the greatest potential to become to soccer what softball has become to baseball. The games are shorter, it's way cheaper to put on, and would be a great rec sport. Sure, the walled version has a nearly 30 year lead on futsal, and it never had the organizational problems futsal has had.

But remember too, that indoor soccer as we know it had the help of the established pro outdoor league to get it going. USFF has really dropped the ball in getting people interested and spreading the word about the game, and that very well may have killed any chance of it becoming popular. But I still have hope. At least in the US, it's not the fault of the game but that of the ones supposedly trying to promote it on a national scale.

Something else I thought of. There have been people here who have said that the reason that the walled version has not been any more successful than it has is because soccer fans don't see it as real soccer, and therefore won't support it; non-soccer fans, on the other hand, do see it as real soccer and therefore won't support it.
Futsal has the potential of getting those who don't like the walled version into the fold because it is more like real soccer. Now, if you grew up with the walled version, as a lot of people did, that might be a problem, but there are a lot out there who either didn't or did, and still don't like it that might swing over to the futsal crowd. I don't have any numbers to back that up (if there are any, anyway), it's just speculation. I just think it's worth a try.

We'll have to agree to disagree on whether futsal is exciting to watch. I like both versions, but I prefer futsal. I've seen it played on a high level, and I think it's very exciting. I will say that the court used in the Indoor World Cup is too big for my taste, and does tend to slow the game down a bit. But when it's played on a smaller court, say maybe 110' x 60', it's fast and exciting, as well as fairly high scring (not the 35-20 scores you get in the NPSL/MISL, but it's close to 10 goals a game sometimes).

I respect your opinion, and if I'm wrong, I'll accept it. If I'm right, I won't rub your face in it either. But I really don't think futsal has gotten far enough in this country to determine if it wil succeed or not. It may never get that far, but again, it just might. We'll just have to see. You never know 'til you try, right?

PS: I'm not "slagging" you, Kenn. You, having worked in pro soccer for a while, certainly have a lot more insight on stuff like this that I, only being a fan for a zillion years. I just don't think we've gotten to the "pass/fail" area yet as far as futsal is concerned. It took a while for outdoor soccer to get to where it is as well.

 

I think that's part of the problem. I watch futsal and I go, "If I wanted to see this, I'll just watch outdoor."

And you and I both know that the snobs who won't accept anything that isn't exactly the way they do it "over there" (i.e., the "traditional" way that "football" should be played and presented) will turn up their noses at this, too. And that those who like indoor (the whole schism between indoor and outdoor fans in this country is an interesting one) will say "Why do I want to watch this, I can just watch indoor?"

That's the essence of my argument. I just can't for the life of me figure out who this is going to appeal to. I think the set of potential fans is very, very small.

 

Keep in mind, the sports landscape has become quite a bit more crowded since 1987, when Arena Football started. It's harder and harder to start up anything.

The WNBA, WUSA, MLS, and Major League Lacrosse didn't exist in 1987. Minor league baseball (especially independent minor league baseball) was just about to explode, as was the boom in minor-league baseball stadium construction. Minor-league hockey went through its own boom and is now retrenching. The USBL was in its third season, and while it's not exactly Tiffany's, it's still around. There were competing indoor soccer leagues, and while there are DNA strands of each around today, they're no longer with us as they were. Since there was no Arena Football, there was no AF2 or the Arena Knockoff Leagues.

I think futsal's lack of appeal, a crowded sports landscape, and the fact that it's ridiculously expensive to start up anything (and, because of that, investors have short leashes and won't hesitate to pull the plug if it's not going well (XFL).

 

I think full-contact nosepicking would have had a better chance at success than the XFL

Still, I don't think we've reached the point where we can say futsal will or won't make it. Kenn made a valid point about a crowded market, and SoccerMavn had a good point about my softball analogy. Perhaps futsal has a better chance at being a rec sport. Sometimes a sport that's fun to play isn't so fun to watch. A lot of kids have said that, in so many words, about soccer in general. But we'll never know unless we try.

I'd rather try and fail than not try and never know.

 

Not the concept so much as the execution. Remember, when NBC lost the NFL, the talk was that NBC (and Turner, perhaps) would start their own spring league. The concept of a spring league with cost control and a major television network as a half-partner was a fairly solid idea. And I'm convinced that had Vince McMahon not been involved, the whole thing wouldn't have gotten two thirds of the derision it got as schlock (which it admittedly was in the execution). But the games were fun as all hell to go to (the irony was that it was a made-for-TV thing that you had to experience live to appreciate). Had McMahon not been involved and they established from the get-go exactly what it was supposed to be, they'd at least have had a chance. Their startup costs had to be through the fricking roof, but their player costs were virtually nil and they did sell almost a million tickets. But it's unlikely we'll see anyone try spring football again because the cost is simply too high.

If it's your money, go for it. Good luck.

Boy, I just realized that last paragraph of my last post just trailed off. It should have read that all those factors make it unlikely, IMHO, that anyone would be convinced to give it a shot.