After much planning, emailing and generally sorting out, Pro Coaching Academy finally got their futsal coaching started at Huntington School.

A special mention to Mr Paley, PE Teacher at the school for all his helping in welcoming Pro Coaching, without him, we wouldn’t be here.

We had 12 boys and 1 girl turn up for the first session, which is a brilliant turn out, and basically means we are now full for the rest of the next 7 weeks!

We started the session with some basic control of a futsal ball.  A lot of the players are very accomplished footballers but some of the futsal techniques caused a few raised eyebrows, such as control with the bottom of the foot and a toe poke finish.  The players moved around the court passing and controlling the ball using the correct technique.

We progressed on to a possession game with the players split into two teams and had a ball in one half of the court each.  Each player was numbered and on the call of the coach either 1, 2 or 3 players had to cross into the other half to try to win the ball back for their team.  After a couple of goes, the players realised that they had to move the ball quickly and then move into space to assist their team.  Futsal is very much a passing and moving game – the longer you stay on the ball, the quicker you get closed down.

Click here to see more images from the session

We then moved onto a match situation in which we taught some of the rules to the players.  To start with the team could only score if all their team was in the opposition’s half.  This means the players have to work as a unit and one player can’t try to do everything on their own.  We talked about finishing in futsal and especially the far post finish or ‘sweaty’ as the FIFA game players know it!  We also discussed one of the key aspects of futsal – recovery!  It is a key part of the game that when your team loses possession you MUST recover back to help defend – futsal is not a game for halfway line watchers!!

It is very interesting to watch good football players start in futsal.  Their technique is challenged because the time and space they get is so much shorter, meaning they must speed up their decision-making.  Players who like to take on 2 or 3 players tend to find they run out of space as defenders occupy space rather than mark players, just because of the size of the court.

This group is very talented with excellent footballing skills.  Coach Chris is very excited to see how much of the futsal culture he can instil in them, and see the futsal level he can get them to!  Watch this space!

As a quick aside, do any media students at Huntington School fancy being the ‘official’ futsal club photographer?  We like to put loads of images on our website but the coaches want to concentrate on coaching not taking pictures!  We have all the equipment for stills and video work, drop us a line using the comments box and we can have a chat!