The Portuguese futsal national coach, a passionate beach soccer fan, outlines the quality that Narciso's side has shown for so many years
Portugal successfully qualified for the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup Russia 2021 last Friday, following a convincing win over Azerbaijan, and they did so with a very special spectator enjoying the victory from the stands: Portugal’s futsal national coach, Jorge Braz, one of the invitees of the Portuguese delegation to the event.
Braz, considered by many to be the best futsal coach in the world, is a passionate beach soccer fan, a sport he has been following for years and which he enjoyed live for the first time in Espinho, six years ago, at the FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup, witnessing his home nation lift the biggest beach soccer prize of all on home sand.
“The best thing about beach soccer is, without a doubt, the technical action it involves, which makes the game absolutely spectacular. On top of that, add the difficulty of the playing surface, the ball always being in the air… It is fantastic, and this is why it attracts so many people“, Braz explains.
“But it’s also the unpredictability of the game, the amount of goals at both ends. Ball in the air, ball on the sand, anything can happen. Unfortunately, we cannot have crowd in the stands at this time, but it’s a great spectacle for fans“, he added.
Braz has seen the team of his good friends Madjer and Mario Narciso lift the World Cup twice, and has no doubt about what will happen in Russia in August: “For me, the team has everything to be the World Champions again. Also, because it is what we are working towards at the FPF, always aiming for the maximum level, in all modalities. The national beach soccer team is a great example for all of us: they have been world champions, European champions, gold medalists at an Olympic event,… They’ve won everything, they have a great group, very well managed. They are a brilliant example for all the national teams in Portugal. I hope we can both be world champions again this year, us in Lithuania (FIFA Futsal World Cup) and the beach soccer team in Russia.”
Lastly, when asked about which players he thinks could be good futsal players, he couldn’t chose just one… “Many of them! Leo and Be would be amazing pivots, Belchior has fabulous capacities, Ruben Brilhante is younger but is also spectacular, Coimbra and Torres, would also be great players, and it goes without saying Andrade between the sticks…Those guys are amongst the best athletes in the world, so I think that says it all… We should have a friendly game someday, the futsal team facing the beach soccer team“, he added.
Now that match would be unmissable…
