German futsal development report 2020

A lot of positive things happened in the past year: official confirmation of the Futsal Bundesliga, the introduction of the Futsal Regional League South-West, progress with the national team and the creation of the first Futsal centre. Despite the positive development on the “macro level”, we our interested in the development of the micro-level and the foundation of our sport for years: the futsal teams and futsal clubs. Precisely, on this point, we looked disappointed last year at stagnation and minus growth in the number of futsal teams. Taking into account the numerous positive developments in German futsal in 2019, we now want to use a new “inventory survey” to see whether the futsal base has also developed positively in the current season.

Data collection process

The goal this year is to map the extent of organized futsal in Germany. As a result, as in previous years, all teams and clubs competing in official leagues (based on fussball.de) were counted. We first differentiate between teams and clubs. Teams comprise the sum of all registered teams including second or third representatives. As clubs, we do not count any reserve teams. This distinction is particularly relevant for the determination of concentration tendencies – i.e. the integration of independent clubs into larger teams than reserve teams. The definition of an organized futsal league that we set is also important for the interpretation of the data below. We have only included those leagues that have a playing time of min. 3 months (no winter league), games with official playing time, regular reports on fussball.de (no creational leagues). These leagues, therefore, do not include the Futsal League Kiel (8 teams), the Futsal League Greifswald (7 teams), the Futsal League Württemberg (5 teams), the Futsal League Leipzig (6) and some district leagues from Bavaria (with the exception of the rather stable district league of Upper Bavaria). Individual teams or pure futsal clubs were only listed if there was no official league in the relevant association (e.g. Staufener SC in South Baden). The Warriors Saar was thus identified as the only representative from the Saarland in the previous survey, but were not taken into account this year because the club does not participate in the Regionalliga Süd-West. These leagues, therefore, do not include the Futsal League Kiel (8 teams), the Futsal League Greifswald (7 teams), the Futsal League Württemberg (5 teams), the Futsal League Leipzig (6) and some district leagues from Bavaria ( with the exception of the rather stable district league of Upper Bavaria). Individual teams or pure futsal clubs were only listed if there was no official league in the relevant association (e.g. Staufener SC in South Baden). The Warriors Saar were thus identified as the only representative from the Saarland in the previous survey, but were not taken into account this year because the club does not participate in the Regionalliga Süd-West. These leagues, therefore, do not include the Futsal League Kiel (8 teams), the Futsal League Greifswald (7 teams), the Futsal League Württemberg (5 teams), the Futsal League Leipzig (6) and some district leagues from Bavaria ( with the exception of the rather stable district league of Upper Bavaria). Individual teams or pure futsal clubs were only listed if there was no official league in the relevant association (e.g. Staufener SC in South Baden). The Warriors Saar were thus identified as the only representative from the Saarland in the previous survey, but were not taken into account this year because the club does not participate in the Regionalliga Süd-West.the Futsal League Leipzig (6) and some district leagues from Bavaria (with the exception of the fairly stable District League Upper Bavaria). Individual teams or pure futsal clubs were only listed if there was no official league in the relevant association (e.g. Staufener SC in South Baden).

Data evaluation

Let’s start with the general overview of the teams and clubs per regional association (Figure 1). First of all, it is gratifying that the Regional Association South-West could now also be performed and could directly secure 6 clubs for the new regional league. While most teams (49) play in the west, the south has the most clubs (44). This means that futsal in the west is more characterized by reserve teams than the south. The regional associations east and north are roughly the same size (36/35 and 29/32). The regional associations of Berlin and Westphalia have particularly reduced over the years. Unfortunately, after the dissolution of the 3rd Berlin League for the 2016/2017 season, there is still no national association with a 3-level base under the Regional League. Only on the Lower Rhine, in Berlin, a 2-level substructure is offered in Hesse and Bavaria. The leagues in Thuringia and Bremen also seem somewhat fragile – it remains to be seen whether these leagues will continue to establish themselves. With regard to the substructure in the regional associations, there is still standstill in Futsal Germany. There is also a youth league in Hamburg and a women’s regional league in the west (8 teams). However, 6 of the 8 women’s clubs also have a men’s futsal team and are, therefore (indirectly) included in the statistics.

With regard to the overall development (Figure 2) and the growth rates (Figure 3), the long-awaited “boom” is still not visible, but futsal has grown faster than it has since 2015/2016. Specifically, the futsal teams grew by 4.22% (173) compared to the previous year and the clubs by 4.20% (149). Fortunately, the negative growth from the previous year (-2.35%) did not repeat itself again. With 173 teams and 149 clubs, there are also more teams and clubs than ever before! It should also be borne in mind that additional official leagues could still emerge from the leagues in Kiel, Leipzig, Greifswald and Württemberg in the near future. The effect of the Bundesliga launch remains exciting. Already next season all clubs have to step up significantly with hopes to secure a place in the Bundesliga. It is to be expected that corresponding clubs will make use of smaller clubs and could thus force them to dissolve due to the loss of the best players. Smaller clubs with fewer players could also prefer the safe route to a reserve team of a larger club with better structures in place and thus in large the club’s development but result in a decrease in terms of clubs involved. This season, 7 teams (4%) have already withdrawn from the current competition (Bayer Uerdingen I, Rumelner TV II, Besiktas Berlin, Grunauer BC, FC Liria II, SV Jeetze Salzwedel and FC Grün-Weiß Ingolstadt).

Figure 1

Figure 2

Conclusion

The current figures of German futsal teams indicate positive growth and the numbers of futsal organizations is at a record level. Although positive, growth remains low (approx. + 4%) and is far from the small “boom years” of 2014/2015 and 2015/2016 with approx. 20% growth. It is to be hoped that all associations can improve the regional league substructure because otherwise the Bundesliga and the withdrawal of two teams from the regional leagues could create a vacuum below the regional leagues. So a call to all “futsal activists”: create teams, network and share knowledge! This is the only way to move forward at the foundation.

Source of the report: Mister Futsal (https://misterfutsal.de/…/futsal-entwicklungsbericht-2020/) – if you speak German this is an insightful site that also had podcasts that you can listen to discussing Germany futsal.

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