In futsal, the conventional approach to building a successful club involves finding a wealthy benefactor and using all the investment to secure the best players. This has been proven to bring rapid results, but, equally, it can lead to even quicker downfalls and little lasting impact. Croatia’s Futsal Dinamo is breaking with this norm and showing a way to deliver sustainable success. From Dream to Reality: Futsal Dinamo’s Remarkable Journey Just over 10 years ago Futsal Dinamo was an ambitious dream among two close friends. Today, the club are Croatian champions after lifting the title in fron ..read more

What are the similarities between movies, novels and sport? The answer is they all entertain us through the same fundamental mechanism; An engaging narrative. It goes something like this; You’re made familiar with the key protagonists who are then challenged by dramatic events. We root for them to see what we feel is justified success or failure, depending on whether or not we identify with their values and beliefs. The uncertainty of their fate keeps us captivated. We feel compelled to see how they perform against the challenges they face. We are committed until the conclusion of the story a ..read more

There career opportunities for aspiring futsal players are limited with few professional futsal leagues and teams. Even the best leagues in the world feature players who are not full-time and far too frequently clubs suffer financial problems with salaries left unpaid. Overall, the sport is still heavily underdeveloped, causing many to miss out on experiencing this wonderful game. Currently, it is very dependent on the limited support that can be leveraged from football and generated by its lucrative competitions. With that comes the inevitable obligation for futsal to help service the interes ..read more

I was recently interviewed for the World of Futsal Podcast which is hosted by former US National Team Head Coach Keith Tozer. You can check it out by clicking here or downloading on your podcast app. I am a regular listener to the show which has had many big names from the game in the past such as World Cup winning coach Diego Giustozzi, LNFS President Javier Lozano and FutsalPlanet founder Mico Martic. I recommend you check out previous episodes. The podcast has reached almost 100,000 downloads since its launch less than a year ago which highlights the interest in the sport and the demand for ..read more

This two-part series features extracts from a research project on developing futsal competitions that was carried out for my UEFA Masters. Part 1 investigated the reasons why futsal hasn’t yet attracted the size of audiences that could be expected for such a spectacular sport. Part 2 looks to the future and how futsal competitions can be marketed to take advantage of the enormous potential that was identified in Part 1. A lack of interest leads to a lack of revenues which means there is an inability to attract professional management to the sport. This creates a negative loop as the expertise ..read more

The era of big data with machine learning, artificial intelligence and algorithms is here. The future is said to be decisions made according to insights from data with its objectivity being superior to human subjectivity. Sport has not been immune to this spreading ideology. Making decisions on data, from player recruitment to evaluating individual performance, has gained widespread acceptance. This was helped by Moneyball, the book and film starring Brad Pitt, that told the story of how a baseball team used statistical insights to achieve success. Data scientists are now working in top teams ..read more

I was recently interviewed for the World of Futsal Podcast which is hosted by former US National Team Head Coach Keith Tozer. You can check it out by clicking here or downloading on your podcast app. I am a regular listener to the show which has had many big names from the game in the past such as World Cup winning coach Diego Giustozzi, LNFS President Javier Lozano and FutsalPlanet founder Mico Martic. I recommend you check out previous episodes. The podcast has reached almost 100,000 downloads since its launch less than a year ago which highlights the interest in the sport and the demand for ..read more

What are the similarities between movies, novels and sport? The answer is they all entertain us through the same fundamental mechanism; An engaging narrative. It goes something like this; You’re made familiar with the key protagonists who are then challenged by dramatic events. We root for them to see what we feel is justified success or failure, depending on whether or not we identify with their values and beliefs. The uncertainty of their fate keeps us captivated. We feel compelled to see how they perform against the challenges they face. We are committed until the conclusion of the story a ..read more

This two-part series features extracts from a research project on developing futsal competitions that was carried out for my UEFA Masters. Part 1 investigated the reasons why futsal hasn’t yet attracted the size of audiences that could be expected for such a spectacular sport. Part 2 looks to the future and how futsal competitions can be marketed to take advantage of the enormous potential that was identified in Part 1. A lack of interest leads to a lack of revenues which means there is an inability to attract professional management to the sport. This creates a negative loop as the expertise ..read more