The World Minifootball Federation will be holding the 3rd iteration of their World Cup this year in Perth, Australia and it will definitely be the biggest one yet. Most of us do not know what Minifootball is and no, it is not for kids.

Minifootball is a 6 a-side game (1 goalkeeper and 5 outfield players) that is played for 50 minutes (two 25 minute halves with a ten minute break in between) on roughly half the size of a standard football pitch and with goalposts that are similar to hockey goalposts.

The reason why one does not know too much about this or even know anything about to begin with is this; it has only just started here.

Singapore is at the dawn of the next stage of the game and the Association of Minifootball Singapore (AMS) already has big plans for the country, with Singapore being one of 32 nations taking part at the World Cup this 1st to 11th October 2019.

This will be the 3rd iteration of the tournament; with the first one having been held in the USA in 2015 and the second one in Tunisia back in 2017.

The World Champions in 2015 was the host nation itself, with USA beating Mexico 5-3 in the Final to claim the trophy. There were only 12 nations playing in that tournament, with traditional football heavyweights Brazil losing to Mexico in the Semi-finals and Germany not making past the Quarter-finals.

The current defending champions, who won the Cup in 2017 is the Czech Republic. That tournament saw an increase in size to 24 teams, with countries such as France, Spain, Portugal, Chile and Argentina also taking part. Argentina failed to make it out of the group stages, losing all their games whilst the Czech Republic, Mexico and Spain won their respective groups. The final was played against second-time finalists Mexico, who lost to the Czech Republic 3-0 at the Nabeul Minifootball stadium.

Singapore has been drawn into Group G this year, together with the defending champions Czech Republic, Serbia and Chile. It being Singapore’s first appearance at the World Cup, Singapore will be viewed as the underdogs to get out of the group but as previous years has shown, it is not the traditional powerhouses of football getting the better of the results in minifootball.

AMS will be hosting the Team Singapore Selection Tournament on the 6th and 7th July 2019 at the Rainforest Sports Hub, a tournament that will see 32 teams play it out for the top prize of $1250 with the top scorer and top goalkeeper also getting individual prizes of $100 respectively.

The real prize will be the selection for the World Cup though, with the AMS technical committee on hand to scout a maximum of 24 players to train for the World Cup. These players will be selected and notified with the aid of the Footsy App, which will be deployed to run the entire tournament and also to keep track of all the statistics of the games to aid the committee in its scouting endeavours.

If you want to get the chance to be selected but do not have a team, the option of individual registration is available and a team will be provided to you. To find out more about the tournament and to register, do visit minifootball.sg or contact 90043022.