“j-futsal”: JFA’s new web site for registering futsal players which was started in April. The web site allows you to easily make registration free of charge and inviting many players to join JFA member.
Last year, JFA started “JFA Enjoy 5”, a new championship for the futsal players oriented for fun-to-play. This is part one of three reports reviewing the last competition.

2013 JFA Enjoy 5 Playing Back

1st Report – Organised the championship for futsal court user for the first time
2nd Report – Exhibition match, the highlight of final stage (to be posted on 3 June)
3rd Report – The final stage, a series of exciting plays (to be posted on 10 June)

In 2013, JFA organized “2013 JFA Enjoy 5 – JFA Futsal Fun-To-Play Championship” for the first time, targeting at the fun-to-play players usually use futsal court. Its first stage started in July with 188 championships in all over Japan, participated by 1,400 teams with10,500 players made an entry. The final stage was on Sun. 27 October last year at Saitama Super Arena, Saitama Prefecture. Total of 687 players took part in the championship, consisting of 60 teams of 5 categories from each regions, 8 teams of individual category participated by individuals with advance application.

Breakdown of teams made application

By Category

U-12：291
U-15：103
O-30：105
Enjoy：287
Open：218
Beginner：131
Mix：148
Ladies：157

By Regions

Hokkaido：39
Tohoku：130
Kanto：368
Hokushinetsu：71
Tokai：164
Kansai：212
Chugoku：171
Shikoku：48
Kyushu：237

As far as numbers of participating team is concerned, there were many teams of U-12, Enjoy, and Open categories because the similar championships were conducted in private futsal court before, and about 100 teams took part for U-15 and O-30 categories respectively due to no final stage scheduled for these categories.
By region, many teams from where many of private futsal courts located - Kanto, Kansai, Kyushu and Chugoku, made entry to the championship. We asked them to register E-mail address of team members at the registration, numbers of registered players per team was around 11.

Five out of total eight categories proceeded to the final stage. The teams of three categories going to the final stage were decided through the second or preliminary stage, the fun-oriented and mixed categories were decided in a drawing out of all the teams participated.

Comments by the champion team of the final stage

Ladies Category Champion

MARUMOTO Akina, Team Leader at Unofoot Dione (Okayama Prefecture)
With no limitation to ages in ladies category, there were a variety of generation of players in this category and we played against the team of mothers, team of junior-high school and high school students, took part in the first stage in July, the second stage in September. I was impressed to see the kids were cheering their mother’s team. I was very pleased to play at Saitama Super Arena, a superb venue and won the championship, really have enjoyed playing with my teammates until the very last match! It was fun meeting with all the players from all over Japan and that what makes playing futsal is exciting. The perfect day of feeling good about playing futsal.

You can search JFA-hosted and JFA-sponsored events such as, “JFA & KIRIN Family Futsal Festival”, “JFA Family Futsal Festival”, “EXILE CUP”.
Click “Event Search” on the top page of “j-futsal” and please check out the events close to you.