The 21st team in the FIFA Futsal ranking, Venezuela, eliminated Spain from the Futsal World Cup in Uzbekistan.
The defeat was painful because Fede Vidal’s team were trailing throughout the match and failed to score. In the end, a goal that seemed doubtful and had to be reviewed in the VAR left the double world champions out of the World Cup dream and, above all, with a new fire in the Spanish Federation that will have to get to work on the future of this sport.
The last few years have been an accumulation of failures and not since 1989 with an almost amateur team had such poor results been recorded at a World Cup. In 1992, Spain finished third in Hong Kong; in 1996, runner-up in Spain; in 2000 (Guatemala) and in 2004 (Taiwan) the team led by Javier Lozano was world champion. In 2008, they finished runners-up in Brazil, as they did in 2012 in Thailand. At that point, the decline and lack of quality became visible with two quarter-final eliminations in Colombia (2016) and Lithuania (2021), to which must be added a last-16 defeat in Uzbekistan. Moreover, this latest World Cup is the second tournament with the fewest goals scored (17) after the ill-fated 1989 tournament in the Netherlands (14).
The failures have a very important component in the figure of the coach. José Venancio was recommended by Javier Lozano to take the bench in 2007 until 2018, when the arrival of Luis Rubiales and poor results led him to leave the comfort of Las Rozas for the Uzbekistan national team, where he failed to advance past the group stage in his own World Cup. Then came Fede Vidal, appointed by Venancio himself, who became the technical director of futsal in a further shake-up of the sport at the RFEF.
His tenure has not been good and the elimination against Venezuela in the World Cup has left him without credit in the eyes of the Spanish football management board, who have already thought of his replacement. As journalist Gustavo Muñana reported in September, not only will José Venancio return to the RFEF, but Vidal is also assured of a place on the federation’s board, although the man chosen for the position is Jesús Vidal, the former coach of one of the best Barça coaches in history, who also had a spell on the Inter bench.
It remains to be seen how all these contracts will be dealt with in a body that expects to hold elections, but where Pedro Rocha and Luis Rubiales left everything tied up and well tied up so that futsal will change so much that it will stay as it is. The humiliation of futsal has hit rock bottom, but the solutions that are going to be taken leave many doubts.
