Mumbai, June 22 (IANS) The world's first ever multinational Futsal league, Premier Futsal, announced on Wednesday the signing of 18 top international Futsal stars from across eight nationalities.
After roping in Alessandro Rosa Vieira, the sports most renowned player fondly known as Falcao, as the leagues first big signing last month, followed by Portugal football great Deco, the five-a-side variant of football signed 18 other Futsal stars from across eight nationalities.
The roster of players signed includes the best player in the World Cup award winner Dovenir Domingues Neto; two-time winner of the UEFA best player accolade and five-time winner of the UEFA Golden Shoe Adriano Foglia; twice winner of the best goalkeeper of the World honours Santiago Daniel Elias; and world championship silver medallist and three-time European Golden shoe-winning Spaniard Miguel Marti Sayago.
Premier Futsal, a game split into two halves of 20 minutes each, will be hosted by eight Indian cities of Delhi, Mumbai, Kolkata, Chennai, Bengaluru, Kochi, Hyderabad and Goa from July 15 to 24 in a franchise based outfits in the inaugural season.
Other celebrated stars of the sport taking part include Russian Romulo Alves Nobre, compatriot Cirilo Tadeus Cardoso Filho, Italian Carlos Eduardo Morgado Oliveira, Brazilian Wagner Pereira Caetano, Argentine Maximiliano Daniel Rescia and Iranians Hossein Tayyebi and Mostafa Nazari.
All players have committed to competing in Premier Futsal for five years and will be assigned a team in the upcoming player draft scheduled for later this month.
"This is a massively exciting announcement for Premier Futsal. To have some of the sports most celebrated stars committing to play in the league not for one but five years is a massive vote of confidence for us. Theres some real momentum behind us now and we are looking forward to what promises to be a cracking inaugural season with a whole lot of anticipation," Premier Futsal co-founder and chief executive officer Abhinandan Balasubramanian said in a release.
