Joel Ajayi
Kaduna city will host the maiden edition of the National Futsal Super League with the objective of recruiting players to form the bedrock of the national team.
Disclosing this is Shamsudeen Tijjani Yusuf, the managing director of Galaxy 5s Global Sports, a sports management company in partnership with the Nigeria Football Federation [NFF] to organize and help develop the game of Futsal in the country.
According to him, ‘’It will be a regional league format that will see teams from the 6 geo-political zone participating in the league for close to two weeks in the crocodile city.
‘’Our aim is to make Futsal attractive and appealing to the nation. Also, the league will produce players that will form the bedrock of the National Futsal team. During the Super League, coaching and refereeing programmes would also be introduced to help improve the knowledge of the game’’ Shamsudeen said.
‘After a 30-year absence of Futsal in Nigeria, we have taken the bull by the horn to relaunch, repackaged Futsal into the country through Galaxy 5s Global Sports initiatives, Nigeria has all the tools and right ingredients to become a Futsal powerhouse but there’s still plenty of work to be done. We decided to partner with NFF being the member association under FIFA to see the importance of the beautiful game in its own right,” he says.
“Embracing Futsal is the perfect fit for Nigerian football,” continues Shamsudeen. “Countries around the world who have embraced Futsal have witnessed its benefits first-hand. It’s become a really popular entry point into the game for many players at youth level.
“Over time we have seen the rise in standards at international level, especially in countries with a deep football culture, such as Brazil, Argentina, Spain and Portugal. Morocco have also shown that they can be a dominant force in the sport as the reigning FUTSAL African champions and are listed 6th in the world rankings and No 1 in Africa.
Futsal is officially endorsed by FIFA, with the first World Cup hosted by the Netherlands in 1989. Eight more tournaments have followed since then with Brazil dominating with 6 titles, followed by Spain with two titles and Argentina and Portugal with one each. Brazil are the reigning world champions after a narrow 2-1 over Argentina, which was hosted by Uzbekistan in 2024.
Futsal is a variant of association football played between two teams of five players each on a court smaller than a football pitch.
