Beach Soccer

His­to­ry

Brazil is con­sid­ered the birth­place of beach soc­cer. The pop­u­lar love for foot­ball in this coun­try led to the fact that the ball was played wher­ev­er pos­si­ble: in sta­di­ums, waste­lands, streets, rooftops and, of course, numer­ous beach­es. Very soon, this type of foot­ball gained great pop­u­lar­i­ty and now beach foot­ball com­pe­ti­tions are broad­cast on TV chan­nels in more than 170 coun­tries around the world.

Offi­cial­ly, the his­to­ry of beach soc­cer began rel­a­tive­ly recent­ly — only in 1992, when the first offi­cial com­pe­ti­tion was held in Los Ange­les (Cal­i­for­nia, USA). Espe­cial­ly for these com­pe­ti­tions, the founders of the World Beach Soc­cer Orga­ni­za­tion (WOPF) wrote the first rules for play­ing beach soc­cer. Since 1995, this orga­ni­za­tion began to hold world cham­pi­onships, until in 2005 the Beach Soc­cer World Cup came under the con­trol of FIFA.

In Ukraine, beach soc­cer com­pe­ti­tions are held by the Beach Soc­cer Asso­ci­a­tion, which is part of the Foot­ball Fed­er­a­tion of Ukraine (FFU).

About beach soc­cer

Beach soc­cer is a sport that is a vari­a­tion of clas­sic soc­cer. Unlike clas­sic foot­ball, in beach foot­ball the game takes place on fields cov­ered with sand, so the endurance of the play­ers is of par­tic­u­lar impor­tance. Since the game is played on a small field, the play­ers have a chance to score from almost any posi­tion on the field, which forces the play­ers to use every oppor­tu­ni­ty to shoot at the goal. This inevitably leads to an increase in the num­ber of shots (up to 60 per game on aver­age) and goals scored (11 per game on aver­age), which makes this sport very spec­tac­u­lar and attrac­tive for both fans and play­ers them­selves.

Rules of the game

In offi­cial com­pe­ti­tions, beach soc­cer is played by two teams. Each team con­sists of 5 peo­ple: 4 field play­ers and a goal­keep­er. Dur­ing the game, you can make an unlim­it­ed num­ber of sub­sti­tu­tions (and there are from 3 to 5 play­ers on the bench).

The match takes place on a rec­tan­gu­lar area of ​​stan­dard dimen­sions (35–37 m by 26–28 m), lim­it­ed by fab­ric rib­bons and with a pair of goals. The match con­sists of three halves of 12 min­utes. If at the end of the match the score is tied, then after the end of nor­mal time an addi­tion­al peri­od of 3 min­utes or until the win­ning goal is assigned. If no one scores in extra time, then a penal­ty shoot-out will be award­ed.

It is impor­tant:

Foot­ball play­ers play with­out shoes, but the rules allow the wear­ing of ban­dages to pro­tect the shins and knees.

Acro­bat­ic kicks are often played in the game, with the rules not allowed to inter­fere with the play­er tak­ing such a kick, oth­er­wise a free kick is award­ed.

Any foul will result in a penal­ty kick. There are two fea­tures of free throws in beach soc­cer. First­ly, dur­ing the exe­cu­tion of a free kick, it is manda­to­ry to strike at the oppo­nen­t’s goal, and sec­ond­ly, the free kick must be tak­en by the play­er against whom the rules were vio­lat­ed. And only in case of his injury, this right pass­es to anoth­er field play­er.

It is inter­est­ing

Beach Soc­cer World Cham­pi­onships have been held since 1995 and dur­ing this time only three teams have cel­e­brat­ed a tri­umph. More­over, all times except 2001 and 2005 (when the teams of Por­tu­gal and France won, respec­tive­ly), the suc­cess was on the side of the Brazil­ian team.

Do not for­get that beach soc­cer is not only a game that is pleas­ant to watch from the stands, but also a way to com­bine busi­ness with plea­sure, i.e. active­ly relax and keep fit.

Author: Alexan­der Kuznetsov

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