Women's Futsal: Find out everything you don't know

Just like what happened with Football, when in 1933 the Uruguayan Physical Education teacher Juan Carlos Ceriani Gravier laid the foundations of what would become Futsal as we know it today, men had the exclusive right to practice it.

As has happened in many other areas of society, women's futsal had a long way to go to get its place in the sun. Just look at the history of women's futsal in terms of World Championships and European Championships.

Women's Futsal: History

While the first prototype of a men's Futsal World Championship was held in 1971 (Mexico) and the first FIFA Futsal World Cup for men was held in 1989, women's futsal players around the globe had to wait until 2010 to have the opportunity to battle it out for the most coveted national team trophy.

Spain had the honor of organizing the inaugural edition of the so-called "Women's Futsal World Tournament", a competition that involved eight teams from four confederations and ended with a final between Brazil and Portugal.

Held on an annual basis, these world tournaments would see, until 2015, five other editions and all with two common denominators: the victory of the Brazilian team.

In 2019, the entity that regulates European Futsal, carried out the first edition of the UEFA Women's Futsal Euro, a competition organized in Portugal (Gondomar) and that ended with the victory of the Spanish national team over the equipa das quinas.

Recognizing not only the excellent organization of the first European, but also the contribution that the FPF has given to the development of women's futsal in our country, UEFA has decided to give Portugal the second edition of the European that will take place between July 1 and 3, 2022, again in the city of Gondomar. Portugal, Spain, Russia and Ukraine will participate in this European finals format.

History of Women's Futsal in Portugal 

Although, as we will see later on, the Portuguese women's Futsal team is one of the strongest in the world, the first notes on an official national competition only date back to 1996.

Held between 1996 and 2013, the so-called Senior Futsal Women's National Cup was a competition organized by the FPF played by the winners of the district championships and the runners-up of the best placed soccer associations.

In the 2013-2014 season, the FPF decided to reformulate the competition and thus was born the National Women's Futsal Championship that after an initial phase in which the teams were divided into the Northern and Southern Zones, brought together the top four teams from each zone in a second round of the championship qualifying phase played in a two-round mini-championship mode. The first Portuguese Female Futsal champion club was CR Golpilheira. Again GD, FC Vermoim and Benfica (four titles) were the teams that, to date, managed to become national champions of women's Futsal. Note also for a change in the format of the championship for the 2021-2022 season with the end of division into zones.

Although we still can't shout "Portugal is Futsal World Champion!" or "Portugal is two-time European Futsal Champion!" as happens in men's Futsal, these and other club teams are the breeding grounds from which futsal players have emerged and are still emerging who, like Ricardinho and Zicky Té, have put Portugal at the top of world women's Futsal.

Fifó, one of the few Portuguese women's futsal players playing outside the country professionally, Pisko or Ana Catarina are some of those names that, in the first European Women's Futsal Championship held in Gondomar, led Portugal to the silver medal.

Even though some of these stars have not yet had the opportunity to play in women's futsal world championships, their predecessors managed to reach the final on two more occasions, besides the aforementioned second place in the first World Tournament held in Spain (2010), one of which was during the 2012 World Tournament held in Portugal (Oliveira de Azeméis) in front of around 5 thousand spectators.