"Futsal" started in 1930 when Juan Carlos Ceriani, a teacher

in Montevideo, Uruguay, created a version of indoor football for

recreation in YMCAs. This new sport was originally developed for
playing on basketball courts, and a rule book was published in
September 1933. Football was already highly popular in the country
and after Uruguay won the 1930 World Cup and gold medals in
the 1924 and 1928 Summer Olympics, it attracted even more
practitioners. Ceriani's goal was to create a team game that could be
played indoor or outdoor but that was similar to football.

Ceriani, writing the rule book, took as examples the principles

of football (the possibility to touch the ball with every part of the body
except for the hands), and he took rules from other sports too:
from basketball the number of team players (five) and the game
duration (40 actual minutes); from water polo the rules about the
goalkeeper; from team handball for the field and goal sizes.

The YMCA spread the game immediately throughout South America. It

was easily played by everyone, everywhere, and in any weather
condition, without any difficulty, helping players to stay in shape all
year round. These reasons convinced João Lotufo, a Brazilian, to
bring this game to his country and adapt it to the needs of physical
education.

Initially, the rules were not uniform. In 1956, the rules were modified
by Habib Maphuz and Luiz Gonzaga de Oliveira Fernandes within
the YMCA of São Paulo, Brazil to allow seniors to compete. Luiz de
Oliveira wrote the Book of Rules of Futsal in 1956, then adopted also
at the international level.

In 1965, the Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol de

Salón [pt] (South American Futsal Confederation) was formed,
consisting of Uruguay, Paraguay, Peru, Argentina and Brazil.
Shortly after, a unique tournament was organized. It attracted some
interest in South American media, which regularly began to follow
futsal. In particular, it was the journalist José Antônio Inglêz who
passionately contributed to the rapid spread of the game, as well as
being credited as the man who coined the name “futsal” to define the
sport.

The sport began to spread across South America, and its popularity
ensured the formation of a governing body in São Paulo in 1971,
under the name of Federación Internacional de Fútbol de
Salón (FIFUSA). FIFUSA initially comprised Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil,
Paraguay, Peru, Portugal, and Uruguay, along with the World
Championships. The new institution counted 32 participating
countries and its first President was João Havelange joined by the
secretary Luiz Gonzaga de Oliveira. In 1975, the Federation's chief
passed to FIFA, and in 1980, Januário D'Alessio Neto was elected to
work to make this sport recognized worldwide by supranational
bodies.

The first FIFUSA World Championships were held in São Paulo,

Brazil, in 1982 with the hosting Brazilian team crowned champions
against Paraguay in front of an audience of 12,000 people, with
Uruguay placing third. The Federation then began to work to bring the
big event to Europe. In 1985, the second futsal World Cup was
organized in Madrid, Spain, where the Brazilian team won again. The
event was a success, with a considerable media interest and a huge
response from the audience, thanks to the Spanish TV station that
filmed the event.

In 1985, Joseph Blatter, at that time secretary of football's governing

body, FIFA, thought it was the right time to enlarge its influence and
therefore also deal with indoor football. Knowing that the Federation
President João Havelange was the head of FIFUSA from 1971 to 1974,
the Swiss decided to summon in Brazil the world governing body of
futsal: Surprisingly, the Congress voted against the unification. Due
to a dispute between FIFA and FIFUSA over the name of fútbol,
FIFUSA has registered the word fut-sal in 1985 (Madrid, Spain).

FIFA wanted to promote and spread its own version of indoor football,
different from the original one played in the South American
countries, but they could not manage to come to an agreement with
FIFUSA in the Rio de Janeiro Congress in 1989.

On 2 May 1990, the Brazilian federation finally broke away

from FIFUSA, and on 25 September, an event
in Bogotá, Colombia contributed to the founding of the Confederación
Panamericana de Futbol de Salon (PANAFUTSAL) together
with Paraguay, Colombia, Mexico, Uruguay, Argentina, Venezuela, Co
sta Rica, Puerto Rico, Bolivia, Ecuador, the Netherlands
Antilles, Aruba, and Canada.

The conference held in Guatemala in 2000 between members of

PANAFUTSAL and FIFA focused on the resolution of the dispute
between the two institutions and on the achievement of futsal in the
pure version that excited many in South America. The signing of the
Protocol, however, was not followed by concrete actions. FIFA kept
on promoting its version of futsal. So the PANAFUTSAL decided to
create a new worldwide body for the preservation of futsal. In
December 2002, the Asociación Mundial de Futsal (AMF) was
founded. It is currently composed of 40 national federations and three
continental bodies, one of which was FIFS.

In 2002, members of PANAFUTSAL formed AMF, an international

futsal governing body independent of FIFA, in reaction to the alleged
stagnancy of futsal under FIFUSA. Both FIFA and AMF continue to
administer the game.