The Spanish final against El Pozo gives an account of the organisation and level of the LNFS clubs

Barça Champions League legitimises professional indoor football

#Champions

The Palau Sant Jordi witnessed the UEFA Champions League final between Barcelona and El Pozo Murcia. Two different models of clubs that met in the big final to show that this sport has to be professional. Also, Olympic, but that is a path that is still under construction. 

#Business

The sporting torment that Spanish indoor football is going through can be summed up by the fact that the RFEF wants to blow up 30 years of organisation by the National Indoor Football League (LNFS). Luis Rubiales has seen business in futsal. The sale of television rights to Mediapro was the trigger to go for the organization for civil or criminal. If the RFEF manages the competition, Rubiales gets 0.6% of all the sponsorships he gets for the clubs that join his business. 

#Rubiales

Rubiales was on the stage at the Palau. He was doing so as vice-president of UEFA and of a football federation that is trying hard to manage the competition. The point was to be there and hand over the trophy. The least important thing was indoor football. At the end of the 40 minutes he had to hand over the cup to Sergio Lozano, captain of Barça. The runner-up was for El Pozo Murcia, curiously enough, one of the teams most critical of the RFEF futsal model. 

#Professionalised

After the match, the RFEF's Twitter was blowing smoke, praising the two teams and home-grown indoor football as if it had been invented in Las Rozas. But that historic match was the final touch to the work that the LNFS has been doing for months: making futsal a professional sport. By the way, something that would cause the RFEF to leave all kinds of management. In Las Rozas they saw the wolf's ears a few months ago and decided to put the label of "professional sport" on futsal. Another trap to the solitary one of the labyrinth of committees of pompous names that assure to watch over the futsal.

#ProfessionalSoccer

Javier Lozano has been the president of the LNFS since he was elected by the clubs in 2009, 2013 and 2017. He has gone from winning two World Cups for Spain to seeing how his successor on the bench has the approval of the RFEF to go around the world, from congress to congress, boasting of having achieved those two stars that shine less and less on the shirt. 

Lozano has met with representatives of all the parliamentary groups to explain what Spanish futsal is all about. From VOX to Podemos, they listened to the president of the clubs offer audience data of each match, talk about the income of each club from the sale of television rights, praise the fans that have gone (and will return) to the halls, reveal the synergies with football teams like Osasuna, Betis or Levante and list up to the more than one hundred thousand records of futsal players that the RFEF says there are in Spain. The bureaucracy will be long and tedious. The CSD will have a lot to say and the axis Irene Lozano - Pedro Sánchez - Luis Rubiales can throw the work away. 

#Models

Barça's model is that of an indoor football club with a budget of around six million euros. One of the largest in the world. Great players, high chips and the whole "Barça world" behind to bring them to the same level as Messi and company. It was not always like this. He had hard years in Second Division due to the abandonment of some azulgrana presidents to the section. 
The case of El Pozo Murcia is the result of the investment of the El Pozo food group since 1989. Tomás Fuertes backs a club that has reinvented itself every season with its heritage. It has lived through years of glory competing face to face with Inter and winning titles. He is now enjoying a second youth with a coach who has led Argentina to become world champions, Diego Giustozzi.  Two different ways of understanding futsal with the quarry as a common strength. Barça's youth is not very visible in the first team and more in other clubs of the LNFS and El Pozo's youth is only formed to make the jump to the first team. 

#SolventClubs

The third Champions' final was for Barça due to players like Lozano, Aircardo, Daniel and Ferrao. El Pozo added one more defeat in finals against the Catalans and they are already 12. Two teams with professional staff and technical bodies. The model of solvent clubs on which the LNFS has been working for years has borne fruit. A complicated process, with sporting dramas along the way, but one that has been worthwhile for those who have known how to manage their assets well.

#Relationship

Now the RFEF is trying to rewrite the history of futsal in Spain. To mount its own account of what this sport has been like at club and national team level. Its management of the competition leaves significant gaps and a public war between the defecting teams and the LNFS. Inter matches cannot be televised because they no longer belong to the LNFS. A founder of the LNFS and one of the best teams in the world has turned his back on futsal and its fans without giving any explanation or offering any alternatives. Something that is a serious damage to their sponsors who do not see their investment appear on TV. Everything is judicialized. The professionalization of futsal will save this sport. The clubs know this. And they all know it.  

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