MADRID, 10 Dic. (EUROPA PRESS) –
The president of the National Futsal League (LNFS), Javier Lozano, explained the process of “evolution” of the futsal in Spain and the need for it to become a “professional sport” to continue growing and show its full potential, a request who is at the table of the Higher Sports Council (CSD).
“There has been a process of evolution from little football to our dream. It is fair and it would mean closing a cycle. Futsal needs the official qualification of professional. If they do not recognize us as professionals we will find a limit and we will not grow as much as we we can do it. Futsal will be a space rocket if the CSD grants us the status of professional sport”, he explained.
Lozano was the protagonist this week on Teledeporte’s ‘Álvarez Café’ program, in an interview in which he reviewed his career but above all emphasized the goal of making the futsal league professional. Lozano assumed the presidency of the LNFS in September 2009, after he passed through the professional area of Real Madrid and also served as the director of the youth academy.
On the other hand, Lozano, 30 times international, recalled in the program different episodes of his career as a player, coach, selector and now president of the LNFS. “He didn’t play like them, but I had a lot of fun,” he recalled of his initiation in Toledo by watching a Brazilian team.
His greatest successes came during his time as coach, in which Spain won two World Cups and three Euro Cups. Last December 3 marked the 22nd anniversary of the achievement of the first World Championship achieved in Guatemala. “When we won, atavistic stigmas in Spanish sport were broken,” he recalled.
“We broke all the hidden inferiority complexes by beating a great Brazil that seemed unattainable. It was news that transcended and although 22 years have passed, people remember it. It left its mark and was the beginning of a reconquest of futsal within the space of Spanish sport that it deserves”, he added.
Lozano was required in 2022 by the Royal Spanish Football Federation (RFEF) to act as an assistant to José Antonio Camacho in the 2002 World Cup, held in South Korea and Japan. “Camacho asked the Federation to join me and told me that the only World Champion was me in the expedition and I noticed that respect among the players,” he said.
“It was a very nice experience and I saw how the achievements of an athlete who fights and sacrifices for his dreams, overcoming many adversities without stereotypes of the sport in which you have achieved the most, were respected and valued,” he concluded.