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12th World University Futsal Championship

Novi Sad, Serbia - August 23rd to 30th, 2010

For the first time, the 12th edition of the World University Championships pooled the men's and the women's tournaments.

After the superb Universiade in Belgrade in 2009, and WUCs organized previously, the Serbian sports association kept up the good work by hosting our 2010 futsal tournament. Futsal, that we called football 5 at the time, was first played in FISU in 1984, in Sao Paolo, Brazil. In more than 20 years, the sports' success has never wavered – the quota of 16 teams is systematically exceeded so that our technical delegate has to do a pre-tournament selection. In 2008, the competition opened to the ladies, as the first women's World University Futsal Championship took place in Brazil again, but this time in Vitoria.

The city of Novi Sad was the venue of the 2010 edition that grouped men and women for the first time (and that will be the rule for the future). Novi Sad already had all the facilities needed for the tournament and our students enjoyed the legendary hospitality of our Serbian hosts.

It has now become the rule – the maximum number of 16 teams were enrolled for the men, plus 6 teams in the woman's tournament.

In all, 3 continents were represented, with Oman joining us for the first time.

The very high level of play helped raise our standards still further; this was the best tournament we have ever organized. In all 312 goals were scored, with an average of 6.5 per game for the men. For the ladGBR vs. BRAies there were 167, or 11 per match. This goes to show that the play was spectacular and well balanced – the idea of a "weak" team has simply disappeared.

Similarly, we were pleased to see a significant drop in faulty play with 15% fewer yellow cards for the men and 28% for the women.

The men's competition was divided into two phases to give each team a chance to play six games. In all, 48 matches were played in a very strict timetable, at least during the preliminary round.

The Brazilian team took the final for the fourth time on a score of 3 goals to 2, with Russia in second place. These two very good teams, each with its own style, offered a beautiful final broadcast live on television.

Serbia, the home team, took third place on winning the match against Ukraine (the defending champion) on a score of 4 to 2.

Russia still holds the record of the number of wins on the podium – in 12 editions, it has never failed to be among the top 3.

Women's Medal Podium

For the ladies, the competition was organized league style, so each team played 5 times and faced every other team, for a total of 15 games. Here too, Brazil took the day comfortably for a handsome double win. Portugal and Russia were respectively second and third.