Futsal Shoes: Yes there is a Difference

Check out all the great futsal gear now available at www.superfworld.com 

In futsal, the need to pivot quickly, use the toe and sole and provide traction on a hard surface are paramount.

By David Knopf
Super F World Editor
dknopf @ kc.rr.com

Futsal fanatics tend to search the Web where few others dare to tread. One of those fearless explorers is John Sciore, Super F League Development Director.
 
Sciore wondered how and if futsal shoes — especially those made in Brazil — might be different from ordinary indoor shoes, the kind you see at big box stores. Was their design geared to the demands of the game or are they simply indoor flats marketed under a different name?
Sciore found that the shoes are, indeed, specifically made to perform on hard futsal surfaces under the unique stresses and movements of the game.

 
Putting his search engine to the max, Sciore found some answers on a Malaysian Web site. Malaysia, you might ask? Futsal’s extremely popular there and is growing at a rapid clip, as it is in much of Asia.
 
(The site refers to futsal players as “futsalors,” which we will adopt, with tongue in cheek, as a variation on our own “futsaldiers,” or “futsal soldiers.” A futsal gym, by the way, is a futsaladium.)
 
Here’s what the Malaysian site has to say:
“The futsal shoes are an essential element of the equipment of every futsal player or easily known as futsalor. Their specificity is due at the same time to their sole made up mainly of rubber resin, allowing a significant adherence on all types of surface, like with the reinforcement of the end of the shoe, often used on the kicks stopped and shootings with the goal.”
 
This, we’ll interject, refers to futsal players often extending a foot and toe-poking shots with the reinforced rubber toe or using the hard toe to block shots.
 
“They are generally made of coating leather or fabrics, with reinforced coutures,” the site continues. “Coutures,” we’ve found, refers to overall shoe design. “A detail, which has its importance, for the comfort and the flexibility of play, the torsion (twisting, especially of one end of the body while the other is held fixed) these shoes must be taken into account to facilitate side displacements and the fast half-turns.”
 
Our translation is this: Yes, the shoes are different from standard flat-soled indoor shoes. The differences are in the substantial rubber toe, the resin soles, the reinforced structure of the shoes, and their inherent ability to allow the quick turns and stops that are characteristic of futsal.
 
Having played and often watched futsal, we think the words “stability” and “torsion” are the keys.
 
 With that in mind, Super F World, the league’s online store, markets futsal-specific shoes designed by Penalty and Dalponte, two Brazilian companies, Topper, which markets heavily in Argentina and Brazil, and by Umbro, the soccer giant with roots in England.
Most of these shoes are unavailable elsewhere.
 
You can access Super F’s online store at www.superfworld.com.