Online course presentation
Futsal psychological aspects
Emiliano Bernardi
Futsal was born in Uruguay in the 30′s and has rapidly expanded across Latin America and Europe especially in Spain and Italy, where the movement in the last 30 years has grown considerably.
Many of the greatest brazilians football champions began their career as futsal players: Pele, Zico, Socrates, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho to name a few. Even the famous Cantera of Barcelona (the youth academy) habitually uses fields and rules of futsal to train its young athletes, with excellent results.
Futsal is ideal for a child: the reduced field, the short spaces, the speed, make it the fastest and most intense game, perfect for the technical and psychological growth.
The main psychological aspects involved in futsal:
In order to make a professional quality intervention is important to know what are the main psychological aspects that are inherently part of the sport: first of all it is important to emphasize that this is an “open skill” discipline with so many variables and choice, is a high intensity game in which the continuous shooting quickly reduce the mental and physical energies of the players, the reaction time and decision making must be very fast and also the physical contact can be due to impulsive and uncontrolled reactions. Another important aspect to be considered is that the mistake of a player can be letal for the result result.
In a sport where you play in small spaces and with four outfield players, if one of them makes a mistake can put opponents in good condition to shoot a goal.
In futsal it is required a continuous and high level of cohesion, given the limited number of players on excellent cooperation, especially in times of greater competitive stress, so the emotional control of the players must be total.
The psychologist who works in futsal:
The figure of the psychologist is growing very quickly in this sport and many of the top world’s top clubs have this figure in their organization. The steady growth of the youth sector and the widespread expansion of futsal academy in Italy are pushing more and more the demand for experts in sports psychology with experience in this discipline.
The consultant program could be about these topics:
- The coach and his staff, through the use of psychological tools as individual and group interviews, tests and questionnaires as the CBAS (Coaching Behavior Assessment System, Smith, Small and Hunt, 1976) or 5C Program (Harwood and Pain, 2004) or the use of tools such as the Leadership Scale for Sport (Chelladurai, Saleh, 1980).
- Mental training for athletes, through the activation and relaxation techniques such as Jacobson training, pre-performance routine, managing emotions with tools such as L ‘IZOF (Hanin, 1980), the ideomotor training, the imagery , the attention training with tests such as the TAIS (Nideffer, 1976).
- The training and upgrading of managers in the areas of leadership and effective communication.
- The youth area in particular the relationship with the parents of young athletes and the role of coach as educator.
- Social projects and integration for people with disabilities both physical and psychological, in risk areas and collaborative projects with schools.
Who does not know this sport may think it’s just like football in eleven but with a smaller number of players, actually many great coaches use training methods based on Futsal field size when they want to develop athletes in their specific technical skills or training the intensity of play and cohesion of their group.
Just the size of the field, the actual playing time, the number of players on the field makes the sport more similar to other disciplines such as handball or basketball and the kind of daily workout develops technical skills such as to make one of the most exciting sports and pleasant which also attend only as public.
Further information:
http://formazionecontinuainpsicologia.it/corso/gli-aspetti-psicologici-del-calcio-5/
