Today we spoke with Antonio Navarro, he’s been working for the Spanish Minifootball Association for last 3 years. He’s a Treasurer and the International Manager as well.
We spoke about the situation in Spanish Minifootball at the moment, so let’s leave the stage to Antonio and what he was able to tell us..
How has the pandemic affected Minifootball in your country?
The pandemic has affected all the sports in general, a lot, not only Minifootball. But talking about Minifootball, as we are a smaller sport it hurt us a lot. We haven’t played for months and that will be felt.
What are the challenges you are facing nowadays?
Our idea is to be able to carry out all the tournaments, especially at the national level that have had to be suspended for the reason mentioned above. But above all, in these difficult moments, our main objective is to take care of the health of our players.
What is the current situation with Minifootball in your country?
All the regional leagues started to play again but with different restrictions imposed, however, it is too short notice to prepare a national championship for this year. To play again is a very important step after a very long lockdown.
What is new about Minifootball in Spain?
The most innovative thing today after the pandemic is having a new unified software that gives us a lot of help and advantages. This long a time without Football has helped a lot to improve this programme that greatly simplifies the work of all the leagues and gives us a better knowledge of all our players.
What are your expectations for EMF EURO 2021?
Our expectations are always the best but we are conscious that we are limited by time, the pandemic and not being able to hold a national tournament before the EMF EURO to determine the best players and obtain more funds for the National team.
It is an exceptional situation, but the illusion to compete again helps us a lot.
What remained in your memory about the last EMF Euro in Kyiv?
The best memory of the last tournament is having formed a great family amongst all the players; unfortunately due to a single goal we couldn’t go forward to the next round, but the satisfaction of having competed was very important and also the atmosphere.
Did you start the selection process of the players already? Do you have a plan already on how to win or maybe you will have some famous players in your squad?
We have started preparations on the selection of the squad but in this case the idea of forming a national team is not easy. Some important players have stopped playing during these months due to the pandemic.
The players were always chosen from the National Championship but as it hasn’t been held this year, the situation will be more complicated.
In any case we will try to bring a team as competitive as possible to improve the result from Kiev.
Minifootball in Spain:
- 24 regional Leagues
- about 15.000 players
