interview with The head coach of the Iranian national futsal team

PLDC - Ansarifar, the head coach of the Iranian national Futsal team: "The number of foreign based players in Futsal will be more in compare to football. Shamsaei and Heydarian will be transferred to Italy."

The head coach of the Iranian national futsal team said : "Because of the European Nations Futsal Cup this year, the transfer of Shamsaei and Heydarian to an Italian club will take place next year."

Mohammad Hasan Ansarifar told reporters yesterday that "we have gained a lot from the two friendly games that we have played against the Italian national Futsal team and it will have many positive outcomes. These games helped our players recognize our weaknesses and not only that we have gone through two difficult test matches, but we can now work on our weaknesses and strength for the upcoming world cup". He also mentioned: "one of our main problems in both games was our defensive line. When we play against the Asian teams and because of their weak defensive structure, we push forward and our line of defense works on the opponents half. But in these two games and against Italy, our main objective was to experience on defending against stronger teams and even though that I must admit our defense was vulnerable, we will improve in the near future". Ansarifar added; "For the future, and to improve our defensive line, we have asked the federation to plan friendly games against teams such as Brazil and Spain so that we can become one of the top teams in the World Cup". He said that: "the best outcome of the matches we played against Italy was the attention that the organizers in the federation paid to this games and having so many fans coming to watch this games will make the federation to pay even more attention to the sport and soon we can reach the top stage in Futsal. We will have a lot more to say in world futsal that we will in football soon."

Another positive outcome of these games, according to Mr Ansarifar: "we now have a better view on the difference between the level of European futsal and the Asian futsal and can work on issues that we feel need improvement". Ansarifar told our reporter that "with keeping in mind the inadequate media coverage and financial support that futsal gets in Iran, certainly if the Italians are interested in two of our players, we will pursue the issue and make the necessary deals. If futsal gets even one tenth of the attention that football gets in Iran, we will have more players playing abroad than in football."

In his conclusion, Ansarifar told our reporter that;" to my opinion, even if we do not transfer any players to Europe,if a domestic club such as Perspolis, spends the same amount of money they spent on a third class player on a Futsal player, with 50 million Toman a year they can have an active futsal team. Also the sporting committee plus the Iranian football federation must create an independent committee for Futsal that can operate under IFF. These will certainly help futsal to operate in a more legalized form and improve the sport over all."

Posted by: Armin A.