Top Rate

Six teams were led by the national coach, and ten included National League players

This was already the 11th World University Futsal Championship organized this time in Koper, Slovenia. The edition played to a full house, since only 16 teams could be accepted and 21 were interested! This is quite remarkable since this is the third time in a row that this WUC has had to turn down participants. Three continents were represented: Asia, America and Europe.
Malaysia was taking part for the first time and Uruguay put in a new appearance - it hadn't participated since 1982.

All of the teams appreciated the very cordial "summer camp" atmosphere that reigned throughout the championship. This did not prevent a very high level at the games, in any case for the better teams. For that matter, six teams were led by their national coaches and ten included National League players. This is additional proof of the international status of our WUC. The umpires that officiated the tournament were also of excellent quality, 14 of them were FIFA umpires. 

The level is consistently rising for the better teams, and we can see that the difference between the leaders and the others is narrowing – the idea of “weak” teams in fact has become obsolete. The best demonstration of this is that fourth-place went to the host country, Slovenia, that has made remarkable progress in just a few years.

The teams behaved very well - the fair play award went to Great Britain for the second time in a row.
In all, 470 goals were marked with an average of 8.7 goals per game. So the matches were quite spectacular. 

The Organizing Committee worked very professionally with a great deal of enthusiasm. It was backed up by the SUSA, the Slovenian Association of University Sports and by the national football federation as well as the University of Primorska and the town of Koper.

National and regional television covered the event which unfortunately did not attract as many spectators as in the previous editions. 

Two excellent teams with very different styles met in the finals of this tournament. The very organized, experienced team from the Ukraine opposed the ardent Portuguese that had never won a medal in a futsal WUC, generally ending in fourth place. But not this time – Portugal took the day with a stinging 5 goals to 1. In the match for third place, Serbia outdid Slovenia on a score of 8 goals to one! Serbia will be the host country for the next edition in 2010.

So we meet again in 2010 for the first edition of this World University Futsal Championship that will include both men's and women's teams.  

Organizing Committee

Slovenian University Sports Association (SUSA)
Kongresni trg 1
SI-1000 Ljubljana
Slovenia

Phone: +386.1.5207826
Fax: +386.1.5207827
Mobile: +386.40.750057

E-mail: wufc2008@susa.org
URL: http://www.susa.org/wufc2008/ 

Final Ranking

1: Portugal (POR)
2: Ukraine (UKR)
3: Serbia (SRB)
4: Slovenia (SLO)
5: Brazil (BRA)
6: Czech (CZE)
7: China, People's Republic of (CHN)
8: Uruguay (URU)
9: Slovakia (SVK)
10: Israel (ISR)
11: France (FRA)
12: Kazakhstan (KAZ)
13: Turkey (TUR)
14: Kyrgyzstan (KGZ)
15: Great Britain (GBR)
16: Malaysia (MAS)