Indoor football had an unstoppable development from the second half of the previous century in South America. The identity and independence of this discipline by origin, growth and evolution, has nothing to do with field football. The easiest example to draw a very simple comparison is that of tennis and table tennis, with the difference in treatment that is obvious, because while the ITF (International Tennis Federation) never interfered with table tennis, FIFA, especially since the beginning of the eighties when indoor football reached such adulthood, organized its first world championship in 1982 in San Pablo and openly, meanly and not veiledly tried to appropriate this discipline.
The intemperance became increasingly stronger, as the already formed FIFUSA (International Federation of Indoor Football), then presided over by the Brazilian Januario D'Alessio Netto, grew more and more, to the point of organizing its second World Cup in Spain in 1985, FIFA still did not manage to promote a tournament of its laboratory sport called 5-a-side football, a crude copy of indoor football.
Indoor football reaped the fruits of a flourishing sporting culture, as a natural and irreversible fact. Football sought to impose a hybrid, an artificial sports robot. In its impotence to achieve this, it resorted to economic efforts, pressures and “non-sanctas” attitudes of all kinds and unsympathetic determinations such as the prohibition of using the word football, which motivated the creation at the FIFUSA congress in Madrid in 1985 of the compound word “fut-sal” to refer to indoor football from then on.
Some time later, FIFA also appropriated that word.
Paraguay, a traditional defender of the non-negotiable autonomy of this discipline, uses futsal to identify this sport by acquired right and protected by the laws of the nation, having registered that word in the official records of the Republic, which is why the other discipline is known as football 5 and those who call it with the particle futsal are careful to use the FIFA addendum.
The two modalities have coexisted to this day, with ups and downs in the relationship that produced occasional rapprochements and distancing and periods of indifferent independent management without new interference.
Having split from FIFUSA, member countries of PANAFUTSAL met with FIFA representatives in Guatemala. That same year, the possibility of negotiations arose. The group of American countries never closed itself off in an absolutist shell, as was the attitude of FIFA on repeated occasions. But it did not give up its position of INDEPENDENCE with firmness. Frank and reasoned negotiation yes, but blind surrender no, was the premise.
This is how it came to this point where, not reaching an agreement that does not harm the interests of this discipline and of PANAFUTSAL, this organization, raising the flag of the autonomy of indoor soccer and the defense of its genuine interests, distances itself from the spurious government of FIFUSA and by not lending itself to a surrender to FIFA, decides to constitute the WORLD INDOOR FOOTBALL ASSOCIATION (AMF).
Photo: FIFA's fearful zeal was ignited by the full house at the Ibirapuera in São Paulo in 1982, at the first world final.
