This article is part of an introduction to the policies and activities of each Prefectural Football Association which is divided into 12 categories: ‘Seniors’, ‘Class 1’, ‘Class 2’, ‘Class 3’, ‘Class 4’, ‘Kids’, ‘Women’, ‘Futsal’, ‘Beach Soccer’, ‘Referee Committee’, ‘Facilities Committee (Environmental Maintenance)’ and ‘Technical Committee’. We hope you read through this article and become familiar with the various activities held across the country.
From this edition, we introduce the series of “Futsal”-related projects.

*This article has been published in the ‘REGIONAL NEWS’ section of the November issue of JFA news.

Futsal Projects - Miyagi Football Association

For Further Development of Futsal in Miyagi
Mr.WATANABE, Chairman of the futsal committee, Miyagi Football Association 

This year we have a series of good news regarding futsal in Miyagi.

Starting with Voscuore Sendai joining F. League, Tohoku University won the 10th All Japan University Futsal Tournament for the first time and Seiwa Gakuen FC won the inaugural All Japan Youth (U-18) Futsal Tournament. Futsal in this prefecture is dramatically improving in terms of its skill level.

That skill level is being brought up through many matches played at the 1st and 2nd divisions of our Prefectural League, the Open League and the Women’s League. Meanwhile there is also a fact that at the college level, U-18 and U-15, both in men and women, do not have many teams playing and we cannot provide many match-playing experience to the existing teams. Especially U-15 boys and girls do not have many tournaments being held. There is still a big difference from the playing environment of football.

Miyagi Prefecture has a good number of commercial futsal facilities. So in order to take advantage of those facility users and let all ages of players enjoy futsal, we organise “JFA Futsal Enjoy Tournament” three times a year. The number of player registrations is rather increasing, but in reality many players are only using those commercial facilities. So it is difficult to find out the correct total number of futsal players. In order to encourage those facility users to register with us, we are working on promotions including timely events in each age and gender category.

In the future we will have more U-18 and U-15 tournaments. Moreover we will try to advertise futsal as one of the school club activity sports, develop more coaches who are specialised in futsal coaching and skills and organise better playing environment. We will prioritise those ideas and work each one of them accordingly. Now our main work as the futsal committee is organising tournaments. But as the number of futsal players is increasing, we will improve our organisation itself, get more recreational players into the registration, and eventually try to advertise Miyagi’s futsal to the entire nation.

Seiwa Gakuen High School students volunteering for the F. League match operation,Voscuore Sendai players coaching high school players