Football vs Futsal in Indonesia

Football is the most popular sport in the world and also in Indonesia. We can see many
people play football, no matter their ages are and even no matter they are man or woman. Football
not only makes our body healthy through the activities, but is also exciting & teaches us some
important soft skills in life like leadership, teamwork, and communication. It also teaches us some
values, such as how we accept the fact that we lost some games and how to motivate our friends
who make some mistakes. After futsal was firstly introduced in Indonesia, it developed quickly
but football is still more popular in mass media with some world class icons like Lionel Messi,
Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, etc or with some local icons like Bambang Pamungkas or Andik
Vermansyah . Although football is more famous in Indonesia’s mass media, Indonesian are more
interested to play futsal rather than football.

The first factor that makes Indonesian more likely to play futsal is the availability of the
sport facilities & equipment in Indonesia. In a city, futsal fields are usually more available than
football fields. For the example, my own city, Bogor, has no less than 10 places that rent futsal
fields and each field usually has more than 2 fields. Good football equipment are also hard to find
in Indonesia. It is only available in a good sport stores and the prices are not cheap. Actually, you
can get some cheap football equipment in street vendors, but of course the quality is not good &
perishable. We have to wear shoes in football fields because if you are not, you will be slip easily.
On the other hand, in futsal fields, of course we also have to wear shoes, but it is not as necessary
as in football fields.

The second factor that makes Indonesian more likely to play futsal is because of the time
& costs that needed. If we want to play football effectively, we need at least 22 persons & it is
hard to spend our time just to play football. Moreover, it is also hard to find a time when we & 21
of our friends have some spare time to play football together. So, to handle this problem, people
usually search other team to play a friendly match and don’t have to worry that the game will be
played with less than 22 players. The cost to rent a decent quality of football field is quite
expensive, it is about Rp. 350.000,00 or if you divide it to 22 persons that mean each person has
to pay about Rp. 16.000,00. On the other hand, a really good futsal field just cost Rp. 100.000,00
or if we divide it to 10 persons, each person just have to pay Rp. 10.000,00. But, that only happens
if you are lucky enough to rent the football field because if we want to rent a football field on our
spare time, especially on weekends, it is usually already rented by other people.

There are many other factors that make Indonesian more likely to play futsal rather than
football. For the example, futsal competitions. Many futsal competitions are held in Indonesia so
it makes people more likely to play futsal to train their skill so they can win the tournament to get
the prize. Indonesia’s futsal national team is also better than football’s. I just found on FIFA’s
website in December 2014 that while our football team is 167th in the world and 28th in Asia, our
futsal team is 46th in the world and 10th in Asia. That is nice to know our futsal’s national team is
quite famous in the world. The fact that our futsal team is better makes our young generations
think that futsal is more promising than football, so now we can see students, from elementary
school to senior high school, playing futsal as their extracurricular activities. Other factor that
makes football is left by many people is because the injury risk. The injury risks in futsal games
are less than in football games because in football, there are usually many sliding tackles that can
make some player get injuries, from light injuries to heavy injuries, or even a broken foot that can
make we retire from football.

So, we can conclude that Indonesian are most interested to play futsal rather than football
and it is caused by many factors. Although we are struggle enough to play football in our spare
time, I think it is still impossible to all football lovers to forget about football & stop playing it.
Even though right now Indonesia’s football team is not on its best condition, I still think that we
can improve in the next few years & qualify for the world cup.