Our Futsal
Futsal as a sport has a rich tradition in Slovenia. The AA national team managed to qualify for the European championship on two occasions and the U21s added one qualification between the Europe's best eight. On top on that, a Slovenian club team managed to play their way into best eight European club teams in UEFA futsal cup. In the recent years a lot of time, energy and money has been invested into development of youngsters.
The start of today’s futsal goes back as long as the year 1984. That was when the Football Association of Slovenia, at that time a Slovenian subdivision inside of Yugoslav Football Federation, established the first indoor football committee. 1995 was a revolutionary year for Slovenian futsal as the Slovenian AA national team played its debut match in Škofja Loka, led by the first national team futsal head coach Dušan Razboršek. Currently the Futsal Committee is still operating as a part of Football Association of Slovenia.
Slovenia currently has three levels of competition. Slovenian top-flight Futsal League is a ten-club competition on the national scale, while Slovenian 2nd Futsal league is split into two parts: East and West. The Slovenian 3rd Futsal League is organized and administrated regionally by Regional FA Koper and Regional FA Maribor.
Accompanying league futsal is also a cup competition, which has been reformatted in 2004. Since then, the futsal cup champion is determined at a final four tournament. The first final four tournament was hosted by Kobarid.
FC Litija, Puntar Casino Safir, GIP Beton MTO and KMN Gorica have represented Slovenia during the recent years in UEFA Futsal Cup. In 2005, FC Litija made it to the final eight clubs of Europe, which is still the biggest success of Slovenian club futsal. Puntar Casino Safir and KMN Gorica both made it into top 16 on one occasion.
FC Litija holds the current Slovenian Futsal Cup title, beating KMN Gorica in the finals with 3:0. The first team to be crowned Futsal Cup Champion was Inženiring Šarbek (Litija) in 1995/96. Litija also has the most cup trophies in its trophy cabinet, winning the competition six times.
Slovenian National AA team has played 142 official matches from 15. 9. 1995 until 25. 2. 2010. The most capped player in the teams histroy is Benjamin Melink, who pulled the national team shirt over his head 67 times, while Jože Gačnik scored the most goals for the national team, stopping at the number 25.
The first Slovenian National AA team head coach was Dušan Razboršek, who took the team's helm in 1995. After his reign finished he was replaced by Darko Križman. The current head coach Andrej Dobovičnik has led national AA team since 2005.
The national AA team managed to turn a great number of heads, when it qualified for the European Championship in 2003 and 2010. In Italy, Slovenia had to admit two tight defeats (1:2 against Italy and 3:4 against Russia) and a loss by a big margin against Czech Republic (3:8). At Euro 2010 Slovenia's lack of good fortune begun at the draw ceremony, when they were drawn into a group with two favourites, Russia and Serbia. Slovenia lost both matches - 1:5 against Russia and 1:2 against Serbia.
Slovenian U21 national team has played its first official match in June of 1999. Slovenia was one of the first European countries to form an U21 team, but the successful story didn't end there. Under the guidance of Zoran Tesko, Slovenia made it to the first U21 European Championship in Russia (December 2008). Slovenia finished between the 5th and 8th position.
