Mainland Football Futsal Development Officer Chris Sinclair and Central Football's Antony Riley have travelled to Lithuania to referee at the 2021 Futsal World Cup which starts on 12th September.

Prior to the World Cup, Chris and Antony travelled to Thailand for the Continental Futsal Championships. You can read about their experience here. 

Day 1: This was the first official day with all the referee team at the hotel. The day began with a welcome seminar, which covered an overview of the competition and primary objectives for all the referees. Following this, we moved into a classroom session, and the hot topic we focused on was handball and video support. The hot topic session is split into two parts that include the delivery of the theory presentation. To conclude, all the referees complete a video test to gather our knowledge and understanding of the Laws Of The Game and ensure uniformity across the whole referee team. After the theory session, we travelled by bus to the training venue and completed a light training session and introduction video support.

Day 2: The day started with the ‘fitness check’ where all referee team
members had to meet the requirements successfully. Although this was only a check, only a feeling of achievement and a little relief was felt across all participants after the ARIET. Post the lunch break, it was back into the classroom for more theory around handball with a video test and group discussions to achieve uniformity of interpretation of law and more video support incident analysis. Some of us used the hotel pool and spa facilities before dinner and retiring for the evening.

Day 3: Saturday morning commenced with a weight control check-in that will occur weekly to ensure the hotel buffet is not enjoyed too much. The theory session started with a video test on denying an obvious goal-scoring opportunity and stopping a promising attack incident analysis, followed by group discussions. With the introduction of video support to futsal for the first time, more training was provided in the second theory session and an attempt to remove referee tendencies to allow the mind to ask “what if??” style questions. After lunch was practical training, where we were split into four groups to cover Signals, Video Support practical, DFK re-starts and fitness sessions. On returning to the hotel from training, we were treated to a “magic show” completed by a referee colleague from Switzerland.

Day 4: The morning session started with a presentation from the technology lead on camera positions, terminology and how best to get the correct camera angles when completing video support review. Another video test came our way on penalty area incidents and further group discussions to gain consistency across the referee team. The group was then informed of appointments for three International friendly matches to be played over the next two days. We then had a practical session comprised of four groups covering Video Support, fitness, restarts from a penalty kick and teamwork. Antony and I have been appointed as Referee and Second Referee for the first friendly match between Lithuania and Uzbekistan, which will be played under complete World Cup regulations. We are very much looking forward to the match.

Day 5: Today was matchday for both of us. We started the day off as we have always done with a morning run and stretch. After breakfast, we had our pre-match talk with our referee team. This is an excellent opportunity for us to communicate with one another and ensure all of the roles and responsibilities are clear before departing for the stadium. Our match was played with speed and a high tempo; this meant there were many sprints, changing of direction and distance for us to travel throughout the entire game. The final score was 3-2 in favour of Lithuania and was a close contest for the full duration. This required us to manage player behaviour and ensure the match was controlled and the players were safe.

Article added: Wednesday 08 September 2021