Africa-Press – Namibia. THE 2021/22 Express Credit Namibian Futsal League gets underway this weekend when 30 teams will compete in three divisions at the Windhoek Showgrounds.
At the launch yesterday, the league organiser, Andrei Tirtirau, said it will be the second year that the league is held, following a successful debut last season.
“Last season’s league was very successful, and now there is a lot of excitement ahead of the start of the new league on Friday.
“We will have 30 teams competing in three divisions namely a first division, a women’s division and an under-17 division. The tournament will be held on a league basis through till mid-December, and will then continue with the knockout stages after a short break in January,” he said. Tirtirau said they hoped to expand the indoor football league to other regions in Namibia.
“We want to take the game to the whole of Namibia and are planning to hold a weekend tournament at Swakopmund as well as in northern Namibia. By 2022, we hope to have a Premier League running nationwide,” he said, adding that they hoped to compete internationally in the foreseeable future.
“We are working towards getting a national team together for international participation, and we will then aim to compete in the Futsal Cosafa Cup.
“We are planning to open a futsal academy over the next year to start developing talented young players and I am also in touch with the Brazilian national futsal team to see if they can come here to do some development work,” he said.
Tirtirau expressed his appreciation to Express Credit, which has come on board as the main sponsor of the league. “We are very thankful to Express Credit for coming on board as the main sponsor. The entrance fee is N$1 500 per team, so it works out to N$150 per player, with each player playing two to four matches per weekend,” he said. Tirtirau said they had approached the Namibia Football Association (NFA) to enter teams but there was no interest.
“We got registered with the NFA as the to official futsal body in Namibia and the idea now is to create our own premier league. We invited all the NFA Premier League teams to enter teams for the futsal league, but there was no interest. However, we aim to start as premier league soon after raising the level of play and expanding to other regions of Namibia,” he said.
