Resilience. The England men’s futsal team will likely need more than a little of it when they kick off their Uefa 2026 Euros main-round qualifying campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina on Friday. Thankfully, resilience is something the players and staff are well-versed in.
The game will be the first for the men’s senior team since 2019 after the programme was axed when the Football Association cut all funding to elite futsal four years ago. Uncertainty has defined the period since, and while the fixture in Zenica, a city north of Sarajevo, will be a landmark trip, the journey has been far from straightforward.
“It’s been difficult,” says Stuart Cook, who has more than 80 caps and is regarded as one of England’s finest-ever futsal players, “getting to a point many people thought would never happen.”
Although the FA allocates funds for coaching development to England Futsal – recruited in 2022 to govern the sport as an FA “partner” – it offers nothing to the national teams. As a result, England Futsal – founded by the Lincoln manager and former England futsal coach, Michael Skubala – has resorted to online appeals to raise £95,000 of the £183,000 required to cover the costs of home and away ties against Bosnia, Switzerland and the seven-time winners Spain.
Despite a £25,000 shortfall by the 25 October deadline, England Futsal said it was committed to participating. To help plug the gap, several players set up GoFundMe pages, just as England’s history-making Lionesses did before travelling to Moldova for the inaugural Fifa Futsal Women’s World Cup qualifiers in October. Both squads agreed to contribute to kit and training camp costs from their own pockets, although England Futsal provided a hardship fund to those unable to afford it.
“Friends and family shouldn’t be paying for us to represent England, but that’s the reality,” says Cook, one of seven in the 18-man training squad to have played when the senior team received central funding. “But it’s also an opportunity for futsal to stand alone. We’ve always said we want to make this sport successful on its own. This is our best shot.”
Cook, player-coach at Bolton Futsal Club and co-host of The English Futsal Podcast with his England teammate Richard Ward, remains close to Max Kilman, who he played alongside when the West Ham defender represented England as a teenager.
Did he seek Kilman’s help? “The sport probably isn’t in a place where he can impact it,” says Cook. “We speak often and he’s always asking about how it is and what’s changed. At some point, when he isn’t concentrating so much on being a Premier League footballer, he’ll want to help uplift futsal.”
At 19, Jamie Brooker is the youngest in the squad. The Bloomsbury player has captained England’s under-19s but is uncapped at senior level. He says the fundraising process has been “uncomfortable” but the University of Hertfordshire student believes the off-court struggles will benefit the team on court.
“It shows the mental strength of everyone involved,” he says. “When times are hard and a positive outcome looks unlikely, we stick together. We can definitely take that into games.”
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Simply fulfilling the fixtures may feel like a victory. But Cook and Brooker believe that, with players such as Jordan Edge, who last summer captained Manchester Futsal Club in the Champions League, and Liam Palfreeman, a former professional in Italy and Spain, the team can be competitive and that the home games at Loughborough University can be a springboard for futsal in England.
“Lots of us have been committed to the sport for a long time, through the good and bad,” says Brooker. “We want to help give the next generation what we didn’t have. There’s a real buzz around the men’s and women’s national teams and we need to use that energy to really push futsal further.”
Cook, who at 38 admits he may soon hang up his futsal shoes, says: “Most importantly, we want to win. But we also need to be positive ambassadors to help get futsal to a place where it’s seen as more than just a development tool for football.
“Representing England has been the pinnacle of my career and I feel like it was taken away from me with injuries and budget cuts. So we want to show everyone our ability to come back, again and again.”