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Every year, before the start of a new Premier League season, the Community Shield takes place and serves as a curtain raiser to the season. The Community Shield is, although a nice idea, rapidly decreasing in prestige and it is gradually becoming an event that no one is really bothered about. A curtain raiser shouldn’t be like this, a curtain raiser should get the passionate football fanatics pumped up for this season and the Community Shield does not do this. Because of this, I would like to propose a futsal tournament that takes place over the weekend for reasons I’ll explain below in this article.
Futsal is a variant of football that has yet to establish itself in England and I see this tournament as the ideal opportunity. Futsal is a quicker, shorter and more action packed version of football and could serve as a great sister sport for football, like it does in many countries such as Spain, Argentina and Brazil. It also improves a player’s ability to work in tight spaces and pass the ball better, which could help the England national team in the future if futsal has been fully established in England. This tournament would be an ideal opportunity for raising awareness of the sport in England and therefore encouraging kids playing football to also play futsal in order to refine their game, much like a rugby union player would do by playing rugby sevens.
So how would it work? Initially, it would occur once a year instead of the frankly pointless Community Shield, but should the tournament grow in popularity, in future years we could see 2 tournaments per year or even 3 if it proves to be extremely popular. In order to maintain one of the tournament’s main aims, that being aiding the development of English talent, there will be a ruling in which each team must have at least 7 British players and at least 5 players who are under 21 years of age (on the 1st August of that year) in their 14-man squad. The tournament would take place across a weekend, from Friday night to Sunday afternoon held at either the O2 Arena or the Manchester Arena. The format of the competition will be simple, 4 groups of 5 that have drawn using a pool system. The pool system would include 4 pools, with those who had finished 1-4th in the previous Premier League season being drawn in Pool 1, those who finished 5th to 8th will be in Pool 2, those who finished 9th to 12th will be in Pool 3, those who finished 13th to 16th will be in Pool 4 and finally the team who finished 16th plus the 3 promoted teams will be in Pool 5. Each group will contain a team from each pool, increasing the likelihood of the better teams progressing. The group stage will be a single round robin (i.e. 4 games). The team finishing top of each group will automatically progress to the quarter final, whilst those finishing 2nd and 3rd will progress to the Repechage. Here a simple straight knockout round will determine which team progresses to the Quarter Finals and the matches will be as follows:
2nd Group A v 3rd Group B
3rd Group A v 2nd Group B
2nd Group C v 3rd Group D
3rd Group C v 2nd Group D
The tournament will then go through a simple knockout stage from the Quarter Finals until the Grand Final, plus there will also be a 3rd place play-off.
All in all, I believe that this competition would be a great addition to English football as it serves as a better and more exciting curtain raiser for the season than the Community Shiel plus it will also aid the development of English players, which is integral for future ambitions of major success for the England national team.
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Game of Ninety 