Futsal

[André Dominguez]

Manchester Futsal Club standings:

Spoiler

POS		P	W	D	L	GD	PTS
1​	Jogabola Futsal​	4​	4​	0​	0​	33​	12​	​
2​	Sheffield​	5​	4​	0​	1​	24​	12​	​
3​	Manchester​	4​	3​	0​	1​	23​	9​	​
4​	East Riding​	4​	3​	0​	1​	17​	9​	​
5​	Sunderland Foundation of Light​	5​	3​	0​	2​	6​	9​	​
6​	York Vikings​	5​	3​	0​	2​	-1​	9​	​
7​	Leeds Super Eagles​	4​	2​	0​	2​	-4​	6​	​
8​	Eagle Team UK​	6​	2​	0​	4​	-14​	6​	​
9​	Warrington​	7​	1​	0​	6​	-39​	3​	​
10​	Poulton Victoria​	4​	0​	1​	3​	-19​	1​	​
11​	Chester Falcons​	4​	0​	1​	3​	-26​	1​

I realized there's no thread about futsal here, which I find strange since this is almost like having football that allows more physical contact, but being less lenient on tough sliding tackles that miss the ball.
It's probably my favourite sport on par with football. Not only the players must be tactically always spot on, this sport requires full concentration, and all players need to be technically accurate, there is little margin for error.

This is a sport that is growing worldwide since the late 90s. In the beggining the USA were actually the 2nd best team, along with northern Europe teams. As the sport grows, we now have much more competitive teams all arround, and some teams who were strong in the early 90's have faded out by some reason, which I find baffling since futsal has become a professional sport in a lot of countries and a top player actually earn about 50k/month on wages.

England is actually 60 on FIFA ranking, which is a massive improvement from where they were four years ago.

As popularity grows, also the leagues improve arround the world. The Spanish, Brazilian, Argentinian and Portuguese leagues are the strongest (IMHO), with Italian and Russian not far behind. Then in Asia there are also some strong leagues, but not streamed into Europe unfortunatelly.

This Sunday there will be the Futsal World Cup Final, where Portugal will face Argentina at 16:00. Argentina will probably win it, as they are the favourites and the title holders, but a few years ago Portugal would easily loose by 8 goals difference to Brasil or Russia. Nowadays you have a lot of strong teams due to popularity growth, and from now on I suspect the World Cup and Euro Cup winners will be more varied.

The major leagues will start immediatly after the FIFA world cup, at October 9th.

This topic will be the space to talk about futsal worldwide: the current world cup, league games, talented players under the radar, etc

 

[Deery]

We tend to play 5-aside instead in the UK and Ireland. With people playing 2-3 times a week it’s probably the most popular past time I’d expect outside of football.

 

[Rajma]

I realized there's no thread about futsal here, which I find strange since this is almost like having football that allows more physical contact, but being less lenient on tough sliding tackles that miss the ball.
It's probably my favourite sport on par with football. Not only the players must be tactically always spot on, this sport requires full concentration, and all players need to be technically accurate, there is little margin for error.

This is a sport that is growing worldwide since the late 90s. In the beggining the USA were actually the 2nd best team, along with northern Europe teams. As the sport grows, we now have much more competitive teams all arround, and some teams who were strong in the early 90's have faded out by some reason, which I find baffling since futsal has become a professional sport in a lot of countries and a top player actually earn about 50k/month on wages.

England is actually 60 on FIFA ranking, which is a massive improvement from where they were four years ago.

As popularity grows, also the leagues improve arround the world. The Spanish, Brazilian, Argentinian and Portuguese leagues are the strongest (IMHO), with Italian and Russian not far behind. Then in Asia there are also some strong leagues, but not streamed into Europe unfortunatelly.

This Sunday there will be the Futsal World Cup Final, where Portugal will face Argentina at 16:00. Argentina will probably win it, as they are the favourites and the title holders, but a few years ago Portugal would easily loose by 8 goals difference to Brasil or Russia. Nowadays you have a lot of strong teams due to popularity growth, and from now on I suspect the World Cup and Euro Cup winners will be more varied.

The major leagues will start immediatly after the FIFA world cup, at October 9th.

This topic will be the space to talk about futsal worldwide: the current world cup, league games, talented players under the radar, etc

It’s nice that you’ve started a thread on it, I went to quite a few games during this WC but most memorable for me was Spain-Portugal in the quarterfinals. Ricardinho what a player despite his age. Magician. Hopefully, I can make the final as well this Sunday, hoping for Portugal to come away with it!

 

[Rajma]

Argentina has been quite defensive this tournament, can definitely hurt teams as they have few ballers in their team but as a team I wasn’t blown away by them due to cautious style of play. Portugal has a decent chance I think. Against Paraguay they could have easily gone out had the Paraguay taken their chances in the first half.

 

[André Dominguez]

We tend to play 5-aside instead in the UK and Ireland. With people playing 2-3 times a week it’s probably the most popular past time I’d expect outside of football.

Same here. In fact I think futsal is more played nowadays, since it's much easier to get 10 players instead of 22, and the rent costs are much lower. Not to mention that when you reach October, rain comes and it's much more confy playing inside.

 

[André Dominguez]

It’s nice that you’ve started a thread on it, I went to quite a few games during this WC but most memorable for me was Spain-Portugal in the quarterfinals. Ricardinho what a player despite his age. Magician. Hopefully, I can make the final as well this Sunday, hoping for Portugal to come away with it!

Ricardinho still has his class and vision, but he only plays 2 or 3 straight minutes now. Time will get us all. I doubt we win it, because we lack a solid keeper (our starting keeper got Covid before the competition and was excluded) and we are actually struggling to find young talent as good as the previous generation of Ricardinho, Pedro Cary or Cardinal.
But it will be tough: Argentina has a more talented squad, more elite players and a younger team too.

 

[André Dominguez]

One of the world most promising players: still very raw, but just 20 y.o. (in futsal the players usually peak later than football). He's still not a completed project, still needs to improve his first touch, but he is very determined and he's very clever on offball movements.

Note: the stands are empty because due to Covid, there was no public allowed on season 20/21

 

[Rajma]

One of the world most promising players: still very raw, but just 20 y.o. (in futsal the players usually peak later than football). He's still not a completed project, still needs to improve his first touch, but he is very determined and he's very clever on offball movements.

Note: the stands are empty because due to Covid, there was no public allowed on season 20/21

Was really good yesterday, basically, bullied Kazakhstan in extra time when Portugal were chasing. They couldn’t cope with him.

 

[Rajma]

@André Dominguez Congrats!!! Portugal the new World Champions!

Also, in no small part thanks to this mad fella (who’s has been one of the tournament’s best players) for getting himself sent off in the most bizarre way:

 

[André Dominguez]

@André Dominguez Congrats!!! Portugal the new World Champions!

Also, in no small part thanks to this mad fella (who’s has been one of the tournament’s best players) for getting himself sent off in the most bizarre way:

Thanks mate. Sport is really a strange place. When we had our best generation, we never got anywhere near a final. This team is actually weaker than the one who took a beating against Argentina at 2016.
Somehow, this group of players made it, when in theory our value would be the quarter finals. But we made our best game of the whole tournament in this final, we had enough chances to make a confrotable win, which was surprising.

Pany made an amazing tournament, he really exceled himself, since he performed way above his limits, and was an incredible joker for us that made a huge difference.

Next weekend season starts for most European top leagues, but Russian League starts his Thursday, Italian Seria A starts Friday, Portuguese and Spanish Leagues will start Saturday.
These 4 leagues league are the strongest in Europe, the technical and tactical level is very high, worth to watch.

 

[André Dominguez]

Best goals of the World Cup:

 

[André Dominguez]

Today starts the Russian Super League. It is one of the most competitive leagues in the world despite having lost some power due to the financial problems that affects russian teams overall, with plenty of top players on their league. Today one of the former league Champions will play, but bare in mind that KPRF Moscow won it on an abnormal season. Usually the title is between Dinamo Moscow and Gazprom-Ugra.

This league already has 3 Champions League winners (Dinamo Moscow, Sinara Yekaterinburg and Ugra. Dinamo Moscow is actually the futsal team with more Champions League finals, despite having only won once.

KPRF did some good hirings: brought Spanish winger Esteban Guerrero who is a very good player, experienced defender Batalha from Corinthians, the pivot Ximbinha from Barcelona who can get space in this team (at Barcelona he was mainly used as a rotation option), but I think overall they have less quality in the squad.

Torpedo is a different team: they are a very fragile team that will basically try to do as much points as possible to avoid relegation. Fact about Torpedo: they have a very strong far right support, it's a club that usually has to cancel transfers due to fans not wanting black players to play there.

The normal result will be Torpedo being battered, even though KPRF has lost some depth in the squad.

 

[André Dominguez]

Tough win for KPRF against a weaker team.

 

[André Dominguez]

Today starts the spanish league, which is overal the strongest futsal league in Europe. Small games for today though
Osasuna - Manzanares
Santa Coloma - Jaen

More russian league games today, but spanish league is way better to watch: even small teams have quality, unlike russian league where basically there's 3 to 4 teams who are competitive and the others are just trying to survive.

 

[André Dominguez]

The great thrill now will be on brazilian legue, where regular season is almost ending. Plenty of the favorites who are already qualified will do much more player rotation on matches, the result is not that important now.

At spanish league Barcelona took a 6-2 defeat, but as I said, spanish league is very competitive, a lot of quality teams, even though in the end there's a top 3/4 who usually fights for the title, but there are many competent teams.
At Serie A, a few surprises, but it's also natural, since the top teams are not that powerful and this give space for some surprises. There are more weaker sides than the spanish league, but still space for surprises.
In the portuguese league the big 2 won their games easily, but our league is very unbalanced: Benfica and Sporting have world class squads, and even though there are some solid teams, they're nowhere near the level required.

 

[André Dominguez]

Fun fact: London Helvecia did well on the qualifying groups stage, but were betrayed by poor defending and only managed to win one game.

 

[André Dominguez]

Let the fun begins in Brazil
At Brazilian league, the regular season is over and now we're heading for playoffs. Next weekend we're going to have some very high quality overall futsal games.

Carlos Barbosa seems to be well drilled this season, but in playoff games that might not be enough. Pato Futsal made a terrible season, which shows how competitive this league can be. Corinthians also had difficulties to achieve qualification.

My choice for this round of playoffs: Joinville vs Intelli: two traditionally strong teams already facing each other at this stage is going to be interesting.

On European Leagues, spanish league continues competitives as ever, with top teams loosing points frquently. Brazilian league has more top teams, but Spanish league has a lot of surprises too. Still only two games played and the season is going to be long.

Serie A is the league that I must recheck the team rosters, since they were the league more affected by Covid, they stoped for longer time than the other leagues.

At portuguese league a shockign result for Benfica, loosing 3 to 1 at Elétrico's home, who is just a decent team. A note for the bad start of Leões de Porto Salvo, a team that tries to mix veteran players and youth. They did a couple of decent seasons, but somehow I feel they can be facing a very rough patch this season. Their best players are veterans, which might be taking it's toll.

At Russian superleague I feel similar to Serie A: even top teams have lost several key players, have to recheck the rosters. Is kinda surprising since russian futsal is well funded, probably the oligarchs lost a lot of money with Covid, I guess.

At the Brittish futsal league, which I started to see some highlights just to see if some of you guys are improving. The leagueis divided in North, South, East and West. I do think this is done due to financial reasons, probably. For those who care, Manchester Futsal Club plays at North division and their equipment looks a bit like Internazionale. You can check their blog here.
https://www.manchesterfutsal.com/

From the little I saw, the South Division seems to be the most competitive one, even though there are yet a lot of cannon fodder teams. But I think with time this will improve.

 

[André Dominguez]

Surprise of the week:

 

[André Dominguez]

The Futsal Manchster team actually made a very good result against Sheffield, who is a strong team.




Things that need immediate improvements: keeping. I guess you do not have enough futsal keeping coaches.

POS		P	W	D	L	GD	PTS
1​	Sheffield​	4​	3​	0​	1​	25​	9​	​
2​	East Riding​	3​	2​	0​	1​	14​	6​	​
3​	York Vikings​	2​	2​	0​	0​	8​	6​	​
4​	Manchester​	2​	2​	0​	0​	4​	6​	​
5​	Eagle Team UK​	4​	2​	0​	2​	-4​	6​	​
6​	Jogabola Futsal​	1​	1​	0​	0​	6​	3​	​
7​	Warrington​	4​	1​	0​	3​	-12​	3​	​
8​	Leeds Super Eagles​	2​	1​	0​	1​	-13​	3​	​
9​	Sunderland Foundation of Light​	2​	0​	0​	2​	-5​	0​	​
10​	Poulton Victoria​	2​	0​	0​	2​	-9​	0​	​
11​	Chester Falcons​	2​	0​	0​	2​	-14​	0​

 

[André Dominguez]

Recommended games for today 19/10/2021

Schedule	Home Team	Away Team
19:30	Barcelona	Real Betis

 

[André Dominguez]

Barcelona - Betis Highlights:

Spoiler

 

[Champ]

The level of Futsal in England is alarmingly still low, despite the money being pumped into it.

I have worked with several youth players who are involved in Futsal setups for local teams, and the improvement Futsal offers them in terms of their footwork is immense, so its good to see the league getting more exposure and I am sure things will only improve from here on.

There is still a long way to go however to match up to the Continental teams however.

Great work in this thread @André Dominguez

 

[André Dominguez]

The level of Futsal in England is alarmingly still low, despite the money being pumped into it.

I have worked with several youth players who are involved in Futsal setups for local teams, and the improvement Futsal offers them in terms of their footwork is immense, so its good to see the league getting more exposure and I am sure things will only improve from here on.

There is still a long way to go however to match up to the Continental teams however.

Great work in this thread @André Dominguez

Comparing to what I've seen a couple of years ago, things are much better. For example, players are not so over commited in trying to recover possession and being caught out of position, which in futsal is more dangerous than in football (less players on pitch, if a players fails 1/4 of the team is down).

Also worked on futsal, was GK and fitness coach some years ago. Futsal is very good for people who wish to improve their concentration too. In that aspect is a bit more mental than football, because the minimal error can create a clear cut chance. About footwork is true: if your weak foot is really weak, that's a big problem in futsal where you need quick thinking and quick execution.
But training methods are very different, specially in goalkeeping where you can't put a football gk training them, the technique and the posture is very different from football.

Some people complain about 5x4 tactics that some teams use when loosing or by default (Brazil golden generation would play 5x4 almost by default tactic), but most of the times the teams who risk 5x4 actually concede more goals doing it than the other way arround.

The way is not that long, futsal is still not a sport where you require large budgets to build a solid league. At this moment Spain is the league that pays top salaries, even compared to Sporting or Benfica (they can easily buy players from our top teams), followed by some russian clubs who have oligarchs funding them.
In his peak Ricardinho got a 50K/month salary at Spain, but I think a few years ago brazilian internationals would get more petrodolars to play in Russia, but the "normal" wage is not that high.

This will all depend on how the sport will promote itself. I think the UK has passion for anything that involves kicking a ball, it will be a matter of time until it clicks. But I think that being a sport that actually allows more physical contact than football and has some rules that punish teams who keep doing tactical fouls it might bring more fans to the sport.

 

[André Dominguez]

In PT Primeira Liga de Futsal, results were business as usual, with the exception of Leões de Porto Salvo who still have zero points (they are usually 3rd or 4th for the last couple of seasons).
Unfortunately for them, they cannot rely so much on Pedro Cary (who is 37 y.o. and used to be one of the world's best wingers), and their kids are not doing it this season.

Yesterday best game: Sporting 4 - 1 Portimonense. Sporting's in a good form and showing that they can probably defend their Champions League title. Edit: the venue is a bit empty because Sporting is not playing at their home venue probably due to some punishment they got. Their fans misbehave a lot in futsal, dunno why.

Spoiler

 

[André Dominguez]

Starting with the local team: Manchester didn't play this weekend due to the North division havin 11 teams, which means there's one team who doesn't plays every weekend.

A weekend with some surprises in other leagues:

Fundão beat Sporting, fair and square. It is a very good surprise because Sporting are the holding champions and champions league winners, but season is starting and the Futsal World Cup ruined the pre-season of most top teams. 22 y.o. winger Peleh made a fantastic game, causing havoc on Sporting positional organization.

Spoiler: AD Fundão 4 - 2 Sporting Highlights

In the spanish league, with the exception of Murcia game, all other games were pretty balanced and it seems they are back to normal level. Spanish league is very competitive.

At Brazilian leagues the playoffs have started, but it's still at the best 16, which means surprises are not keen to happen, but surprisingly Magnus conceeded a draw. The major surprise so far was Pato Futsal not even qualifying for the playoffs, but the Brazilian league is also very competitive.

Today it starts the Champions League: it's still groups stage but they are usually a good assessment on how much the sport is evolving. This year we are going to have a group stage with 8 groups, which means 32 teams will be participating.

Today Barcelona and Levante will start their participation. In Futsal Champions League things are a bit different: the group stage games are all played in 6 day period, with one of the teams hosting all the games. The games will take place in Kaunas, Zalgiris home at Lithuania.

The way the champions league work is more complex, but I think is also more fair and keeps competitive levels up. For more information about how it works: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2021–22_UEFA_Futsal_Champions_League

 

[André Dominguez]

Champions League, day 2:

Barcelona is battering LEvante atm moment. 1-9. Need to see the highlights to realise what did just happened, Levante is a very decent team, a 2 goal margin defeat against Barça would be "normal".

But bare in mind that this seasons Barcelona hired the best futsal manager on the market. They started a bit shaky due to the world cup ruining their pre-season (basically almost every Barça player was at the world cup), but I guess they will steam roll a lot of teams this season.

 

[André Dominguez]

Last day of the 1st group stage of Uefa Champions League, with the exception of group 6 ecause ukrainian hosts got some delays. Almost all matches are streamed live and free on Youtube.

Clubs already qualified for the Elite Round:
Benfica (Portugal)
Sporting (Portugal)
Barcelona (Spain)
Tyumen (Russia)

The other ones will still to play full team to guarantee their spot on Elite Level.

From the champions path (1st to 3rd qualifies):

• In group 1 things are pretty much decided, unless Benfica rotates a lot and gives the weakest team some chance to win.
• In group 2, ACCS (France) has a decisive game.
• In group 3 Levante (Spain) will easily win, with the 3rd place spot being decided by GD, almos for sure.
• In group 4 Pesaro (Italy) and Kairat Almaty (Kazakhstan) are going to be the match of the day.

From the league path (Only group winners qualify):

• In group 5, Haladas (Hungary) will probably qualify. They have an easy match for the last day,
• Group 6 had some organization issues and so they still are in gameday 1.
• Group 7 will probably see MNK Olmissum (Croatia) get the qualifying spot.
• Group 8 will have a thrilling match between Mostar (Bosnia & Herzegovina) and Hovocubo (Netherlands) to decide qualification.

Recommended matches:
At 17:00, Pesaro will face Kairat Almaty
At 19:00 - Mostar will face Hovocubo

 

[André Dominguez]

Weekend update:

Manchester United Futsal Club
Manchester United Futsal Club won the weekend game by a large margin. I think they will make it easily to the playoffs. They hammered the Eagles Team UK by 16-7, a bit of a ludicrous result if you bare in mind top leagues.
Standings are now update at 1st post.


UEFA Champions League - Elite Round

The champions laeague 1st group stage is over, let the more competitive games begin. The groups are the following:

Group A: Kairat Almaty (Kazakhstan), ACCS Asnières Villeneuve 92 (France), Viten Orsha (Belarus), Tyumen (Russia, host of the group stage)
Group B: Sporting CP (Portugal, host of the group stage), Sinara Ekaterinburg (RUS), Olmissum (CRO), Hovocubo (NED)
Group C: Barça (Spain), SK Plzeň (Czech Republic, host of the group stage), Halle-Gooik (Belgium), Dobovec (Slovenia)
Group D: Benfica (Portugal, host of the group stage), Levante (Spain), Haladás (Hungary), Uragan Ivano-Frankivsk (Ukraine (or Mykraine as Putin says) )

The seeding is by order as it was written. The host is the venue where all group matches will be played. To be honest, I think this would be a much better idea for Football Champions league too, because it would create less conflicts schedule, even though the host team has a bit of an edge.

Brazilian Playoffs

Corithians fell on the playoffs, make them the 2nd "usual candidate" to win the league to stay out of the competition. The 1/4 finals matches are:

06.11. 14:00 Joinville - Magnus
06.11. 17:00 Sao Jose - Foz Cataratas
07.11. 14:00 Joacaba - Cascavel
08.11. 21:00 Atlantico - Carlos Barbosa

We are going to have a terrific match between Joinville and Magnus. Joinville is in a better form, but playoffs can become unpredictable.

In italian league, Padova keeps wining, but we all know that what really matters are the playoffs.

In Spain, the usual competitive results. Best league by a mile, even though they still have some top teams above others, but they always have to play 100%

Weekend best match was: Murcia - Inter Movistar (highlights bellow)

Spoiler

 

[André Dominguez]

Another weekend update:
Manchester won another match, easy 12-2 victory over Warrington, which drives them to top 3. Tables are updated in the first post. Unfortunately LNFS media became lazy and stopped uploading highlights since a few weeks ago.

Brazilian Serie A Playoffs:
A shocking defeat by Carlos Barbosa makes one the week surprises, leaving Carlos Barbosa in disadvantadge. They lost with a clear result of 6-2.
Joinville 2 - 3 Magnus: a tight and exciting game between two powerful candidates. Make sure to watch the highlights.

Spoiler

Spanish League:
Murcia 1 - 2 Jaen: Murcia had a surprising home defeat, but as I told before, spanish league futsal level is really high. A very good match worth of watching the highlights.

Spoiler

Russian League:
Norilsky 3 - 5 KPRF: KPRF is back on top, after a dodgy start. They did a very interesting attacking game, but overall was a game where both teams made a lot of mistakes. This system where every team plays each other twice seems a bit off tbh.

Portuguese League:
the usual results, nothing outstanding to be noticed this week.

 

[André Dominguez]

Ricardinho has retired from International futsal. WIll dedicate his final career years to club football.

 

[André Dominguez]

Weekend update

LNFS England:
Manchester didn't play this weekend, they are now 2/3 games behind other teams. They will much probably reach playoff qualification.

At brazilian playoffs:
Already at semi-finals. Today Carlos Barbosa will play at CAscavel home. Will be an interesting match to watch.

Game of the weekend:
Sporting 5 - 2 Benfica: usually these games are balanced, but Sporting made a very solid performance. The usual derby with red cards and all. This game brought the return of the veteran pivot Cardinal, who's back from injury and made a very good game.



The other game of this weekend is Murcia 2 - 4 Barça: two big teams in Spain, but Barça have assembled a solid squad and hired the best futsal manager on the market.

 

[André Dominguez]

Major update

Manchester Futsal Club games keep getting dealyed, sothere's no really big updates.

UEFA Futsal Champios League - Elite Round

The elite round was played last week + weekend. In this round only the group winners go to the next round, which is the final four. Kairat not wining their group was somewhat surprising, despite the value of ACCS and the russian team who qualified. Barcelona and Benfica made it easy peasy, while Sporting complicated a bit despite being the group host. The 1-1 result against Yekaterinburg ended up being enough, but they had to suffer until the end.

Qualified teams for final four:
Sporting (Portugal), Benfica (Portugal), Barcelona (Spain) and Tyumen (Russia)

Brazilian Futsal League - The finals

Playoffs are reaching their end, with the finalists already known. Magnus Futsal will face Cascavel with first game on 12/12 and second game on 19/12

Magnus Futsal main titles:
3 Clubs Wolrd Cups
1 Copa Libertadores
2 Brazilian Champions Titles
1 Brazilian Cup
1 Brazilian Supercup

Cascavel can nick their first title in this final.

 

[André Dominguez]

Manchester still only 4 games played. The disparity between played games on the english LNFS is becoing alarmingly high.

Brazilian Futsal League - The finals

Cascavel won their first title ever. This is probably not surprising for brazilian folks, but for someone who knows futsal more by clubs reputation is somewhat surprising. Not surprising to see a new champion to be precise, but more how easy Cascavel made it on the finals.

Spoiler: First leg

Spoiler: Second leg

Shocking result on International Friendly

Spain baiscally steamrolled Portugal on a friendly. The defeat itslef is not surprising: we basically overplayed ourselves on the world cup, since Spain, Argentina and Brazil were teams better than PT side, we were a bit of a surprise on that tournament.

Spoiler: Spain 6 - 0 Portugal

 

[André Dominguez]

OK. Long time no see.

The UEFA Euro 2022 is being played now. The group stage is almost over for group A, but still at 2nd round for the other groups.

Netherlands are hosting it and they are doing fine IMO. One victory against Serbia will see them through next round.

On group A we have Portugal, Netherlands, Serbia and Ukraine. Portugal is basically confirming being favorites, but still have to secure at least a draw to go through.
Netherlands had defeated Ukraine and now will face Serbia, who is not playing very well atm, so I think the dutch have a fair chance to qualify for the playoffs.

On group B we have Slovenia, Kazakhstan, Finland and Italy. With just 1 game played, all results were draws. Italy and Kazakhstan were in theory the favourites, but things might complicate.

Group C: Russia, Croatia, Poland and Slovakia. Russia has an easy group, should qualify easily. Let's see if facing such easy opponents won't play against them when they face tougher ones.

Group D has Spain, Georgia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Azerbaijan. Spain is he favourite to win this title, should qualify easily, but the group has some decent opponents, with the exception of Bosnia who his the weakest link. This eastern teams are usually well organized but Spain will manage to win all games IMO.

For today
Italy - Slovenia at 16:30
Finland - Kazakhstan 19:30

Both games are pretty much unbalanced, but Slovenia has been improving, I guess they can cause Italy some issues.

 

[André Dominguez]

As predicted, Italy had choked with Slovenia who is a nation clearly improving on this sport. A 2-2 result might give hope to the Slovenians to go through.

Spoiler: Italy 2 - 2 Slovenia

Today we have Croatia - Russia. Russia is clearly the favourite, but Croatia is a tough team to beat. Russia will win by minimal margin.
The other game is between Poland and Slovakia, a game where you can see how well each of those teams improved (or not).

 

[André Dominguez]

Croatia was easier than expected. They lost their emotional control after a 3' red card and could had been an even bigger disaster during the 1st half.

Poland and Slovakia had a 2-2 result.

Today Spain has an easy game against Azerbaijan, while Bosnia and Georgia will face each other.

 

[André Dominguez]

Kazakhstan are playing Italy. Vital match for both teams. go and watch it right now

At 19:30 Ukraine will face Portugal for another decisive match. In theory PT will win it, but Ukraine got an impressive 6-1 result vs Serbia.

 

[André Dominguez]

So, a few things more happened in the Euro 2022.

Portugal had to pull the gallons to pass Finland, while Ukraine (despite loosing to Portugal on groups stage) manage to beat the Kazakhstan, who is always a tough team to break.

Spoiler: Portugal 3 - 2 Finland

Today easy games for both Spain and Russia. pain - Portugal in the semi-finals in case Spain goes through (they are 99.9% favourites)

On another continent, Copa America is happening too., but they are still on groups stage. Brazil and Argentina are clear favorites, but I'm curious to check how much did the other teams improved.

Paraguay usually have decent players, So I'm not ruling them out, since the home advantage can have some weight.

 

[André Dominguez]

Spain - portugal and Russia - Ukraine on the semi-finals. Two hot games with historical rivalries. This friday at 16:00

 

[André Dominguez]

A bit of preview for today's matches. Let's start with Spain vs Portugal

In this match, Spain is clearly the favourite once again. They have better squad and better manager. Still, the pressure of being an official game can change things as it happened this year already.

Last 6 results between both teams:

Result	Competition	Day
Spain 6 - 0 Portugal	Friendly match	2022/12/19
Spain 4 - 3 Portugal	Friendly match	2022/12/18
Spain 2 - 4 Portugal	World Cup 2021	2021/09/27
Spain 1 - 0 Portugal	Friendly match	2019/09/24
Spain 2 - 1 Potugal	Friendly match	2019/09/23
Spain 2 - 3 Portugal	Euro 2018	2018/02/10

Spain has really a great team, but are having troubles to introduce young talent in the latest seasons: they have good solutions for goalkeepers, any of them can play and perform.
Despite their defense is a bit veteran, 22 y.o. Mellado is an amazing talent, a defender who can also score goals, providing both safety and goal threat.

Spoiler: Miguel Mellado

Their veteran Raul Campos still spreads terror on opposition defense, and Raul Gomez makes a very interesting link-up play.

Portugal has quality in the squad, but lacks balance on the options. The keeper position is an obvious one, where their current keeper is not even a starter at his current club (he is now due to the main keeper lost form last season).
Ricardinho has retired form international futsal, but we still have the Coelho brothers who are elite players, and the young starlet Zicky Té who can be unstopable in his day, not only because of his skill, but also because he's a very powerful and fast forward.

I believe Portugal will start in the first minutes with their usual: Sousa on the goalie, João Matos as the defender, Pany and Bruno Coelho as wingers and Erick will be an all-arround player. Things will change fast surely with the subs.

Spain on other hand will be the usual high pressure game, high lines and good quick combinations. In the world cup match Portugal won because Spain couldn't score despite creating very good chances and the tables turned.

What will happen today? We will see it tonight live.