The international football association Fifa announced on Friday about the reforms, one of which concerned the organization of the Women’s Futsal World Cup tournament.
Fifa gave good news to futsal fans on Friday: women will finally get their own World Cup tournament, after decades of waiting.
Men have been able to play futsal for the World Cup gold for more than 30 years. The first World Cup was organized by Fifa for men in 1989. The women’s World Cup has been awaited for more than 30 years now, but the long wait will soon end.
– Really hoped for, awaited news. It’s a great signal that Fifa finally opened up this opportunity for women too. This is a big thing for the players, that there is a chance to talk about the world championship. That’s a big deal. The development will continue from now on, head coach of the women’s national futsal team Jaakko Laitinen commented to Urheilu.
Last September, the Spanish women’s futsal players’ association appealed to Fifa to organize the final tournament. Many players have brought it up. Laitinen also said that he sent a message to Fifa through the Finnish Football Association.
The schedule for organizing the new competition has not yet been made public. According to Laitinen, there have been talks since 2024, so the qualifiers could start very soon.
According to Laitinen, the women’s WC final tournament is a huge opportunity for the sport.
– It brings a lot of visibility and is a big thing in terms of the growth of the sport. There has been strong competition in most continents and I believe that now the sport will spread even more in the world.
More competitive games
Women have been playing for the European championship since 2019. So far, competitions have been held twice: in 2019 and in the spring of 2022. Spain has won the gold in both tournaments.
The next EC tournament will be played in March 2023. Finland was placed in the same qualifying group as Spain, and the place in the final tournament remained a dream.
– We didn’t get the result we were looking for. The challenge is huge when the reigning European champions were in the same group. There are only four teams in the EC final tournament, so let’s hope that there will be development in the future as well.
According to the unofficial world ranking, the Finnish women’s futsal team is currently the 16th best in the world. First on the list is Brazil and second is European champion Spain.
Next, the women’s national futsal team will meet next year and will already start preparing for the next qualifiers. There is no information yet when the qualifiers for the World Championships would start.
In any case, the number of competitive matches increases, which pleases Laitis.
– I could see that we have developed a lot and we will continue to develop as we gain as much experience as possible from competitive, hard matches for the players.