Gestion des compétitions et fédérations de Futsal

Futsal () is a scaled-down, smaller, less popular variant of association football played between two teams of five players each on a court smaller than a football pitch. Its rules are based on the Laws of the Game of association football, and it also shares similarities with five-a-side football and indoor soccer.

Futsal players, one of whom on each team is the goalkeeper, mainly use their feet to propel a ball around the court with the objective of scoring goals against the opposing team by moving the ball beyond the goal line into the opposing team's goal. A futsal match consists of two periods of 20 minutes, and the team that scores more goals wins; an equal number of goals scored results in a draw. Futsal is played with a smaller and heavier ball than association football, and usually indoors on a hardcourt surface marked by lines.

The playing surface, ball, and rules favour ball control and passing in small spaces. For these reasons, futsal is commonly used by coaches as a means to develop association football players. Futsal is played worldwide, but it is most popular in South America and the Iberian Peninsula, where there are many professional teams. In much of the rest of the world, the sport is primarily amateur or recreational.

Futsal comes from the Portuguese futebol de salão and from the Spanish fútbol sala or fútbol de salón, all translatable as "indoor football" (lit. 'hall football' or 'room football'). The term may have been coined by a Brazilian journalist in the 1960s. Due to a dispute between FIFA and FIFUSA (now the World Futsal Association) in the 1980s over the use of the word "football", FIFUSA started using the term futsal during its 1985 World Championship in Madrid, Spain. However, FIFA, which started organising its own international futsal tournaments in 1989, also adopted the term in the 1990s. Since then, futsal has become the officially and internationally accepted name.

Futsal started in 1930 in Montevideo, Uruguay, when a physical education teacher named Juan Carlos Ceriani created a version of indoor football for YMCAs.

Originally developed for basketball courts, a rule book for the sport was published in September 1933. Association football was already highly popular in the country, and after Uruguay won gold medals in the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics, and the 1930 FIFA World Cup, it attracted even more practitioners. Ceriani's goal was to create a team game similar to football that could be played indoors or outdoors.

While writing the rule book, Ceriani combined the principles of association football—where the ball may be touched with every part of the body except the hands and arms—with rules from other sports: from basketball, the number of players (five per team) and the game's duration (40 active minutes); from water polo, the goalkeeping rules; from hockey, the substitution rules; and from handball, the field and goal sizes.

The YMCA spread the game quickly throughout South America. Futsal was a more accessible and less physically demanding sport than association football that could be played indoors. It even helped players of other sports stay in shape year-round. These reasons convinced João Lotufo, a Brazilian, to bring the game to his country and adapt it to the needs of physical education.

In 1956, the rules were modified by Habib Maphuz and Luiz Gonzaga Fernandes within the YMCA of São Paulo, Brazil, to allow seniors to compete. This YMCA also published, in the same year, a book of the "Brazilian Indoor Football Rules", which was adopted by other South American countries as well.

In 1965, the South American Futsal Confederation was created, consisting of Uruguay, Peru, Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina. Shortly after, a tournament was organised. It attracted interest from South American media, which began to cover futsal regularly. In the 1960s, Brazilian journalist José Antônio Inglêz contributed to the spread of the game, and he may have coined the term "futsal", although it did not come into widespread use until the 1980s.

Governance disputes and international growth

In 1971, the International Federation of Indoor Football (FIFUSA in both the Portuguese and Spanish abbreviations) was formed, comprising Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Paraguay, Peru, Portugal and Uruguay. FIFUSA organised the first Futsal World Championship in 1982 in São Paulo. Shortly after, FIFA took an interest in futsal, but talks between the two organisations to reconcile governance were unsuccessful.

In 1985, FIFUSA organised its second world championship in Madrid, Spain. FIFA tried to prohibit FIFUSA from using the word "football", even in Spanish, in the tournament's title. To date most people in Spain call the game Futbol Sala. The term FUTSAl was first used by then the United States Minisoccer Federation, when its Vice-President (Alex Para) thought that an international name that would not change, regardless of the language should be used. He came out with the term FUTSAL and proposed it to the board of USMF. The board of the U.S. Minisoccer Federation approved the new name since it included in it the word USA. The Federation changed its corporate name in the State of California in 1986 to the United States Futsal Federation. Upon joining FIFA, Alex Para proposed to FIFA President Havelange in 1989 that the name FUTSAL should be used for the FIFA 2nd World Cup, which was being named the 5-a-side FIFA World Cup. For logistical reasons, it was not late, but FIFA started using it in the 3rd. World Cup in Spain in 1996. FIFUSA then resorted to using the term futsal in the, blending futbol and sala. The term, "futsal" has become the sport's most common name.

Since the early 1990s, most national futsal associations have decided to join FIFA, weakening FIFUSA. In late 2002, FIFUSA was reorganised into the World Futsal Association (AMF in the Spanish abbreviation), with its headquarters in Asunción, Paraguay. AMF continues to develop its own version of futsal and to stage its own tournaments in association with affiliated organisations.