SPOTLIGHT ON BLOOMSBURY’S FUTSAL PROGRAMME

At Bloomsbury Football, we want to ensure that there is a session that caters for every young person from the age of 18 months to 18 years old. Because of that, we have programmes designed for early years development, newly arrived refugees and young people living with disabilities.  

We are aware that not every young person wants to get on an outdoor football pitch, and that’s where our Futsal programme comes in. Played on a smaller indoor pitch with harder, lower-bounce balls, futsal is a faster game that requires more control, improvisation and creativity. Our futsal sessions still teach young people the transferrable life skills that they would learn on the football pitch, but the Futsal programme offers a different way to change the game.  

We launched our Futsal programme in 2021 by partnering up with JK and his organisation, ProFutsal. JK has had a long journey playing professional football and futsal and is driven by his passion for coaching and helping his players to develop both on and off the pitch.

JK started playing football aged 9 and was signed to Arsenal’s Academy two years later, where he played until he was 16. From there, he played at Charlton as a Youth Training Scholar. However, the culture in the footballing world led him to fall out of love with the game.  

Signing with Arsenal aged 11, he was told that ‘the hard work starts now’, and he was left wondering when the enjoyment would follow. Aged 19, JK moved to Scotland to play professionally for Aberdeen, but he also found this environment toxic and lacking in player support. He decided to make a change and find a new path where he would find a more supportive environment in which he could develop.  

Studying Sports Science at Loughborough University was the start of JK’s coaching journey. He became the coach for the Women’s Second Team, and found the enjoyment that he had been searching for on the football pitch. It was at Loughborough that he was introduced to futsal, and he has been playing ever since.  

JK has represented England playing futsal at the highest level in the UK and beyond, and after university, he became a full-time football coach. It was in this role that he developed his coaching style, which focuses on football principles and technique development. With some encouragement from his community, JK founded ProFutsal in London, which he grew from one team to eight teams.  

It was at ProFutsal that JK met Charlie. Bloomsbury’s Founder & CEO was playing in the Men’s First Team. JK learned about Bloomsbury’s social impact mission and decided to join our community so that he could grow the grassroots futsal provision and be part of a wider support network in the organisation.  

Bloomsbury’s Futsal programme has the same mission as the organisation as a whole: the goal is to ensure that no young person is turned away from the pitch and that everyone can benefit from regular Futsal training with qualified coaches.   

Our Futsal programme now delivers 42 hours of sessions per week to 390 players, 267 of which are young people and 123 are adults. We are proud to say that 41.5% of young people are girls.  

Bloomsbury Futsal’s First Teams are playing at the highest level of futsal in the country. The Men’s First Team has 6 England international players, 3 international players from New Zealand and 1 Australian international player. On the Women’s First team, there are also 3 international players from New Zealand and 1 from Northern Ireland. Recently, 6 of the 12 players on the U19 England squad has won their qualifying matches in Lithuania for the Euros.  

If you want to get involved with our Futsal programme, the Men’s and Women’s First Teams are competing at the Top Tier of English Futsal at Aldenham School on 28 and 29 January. Tickets are available here and we’d love to see our community there.  

Our futsal programme is open to all so if you’d like to get on the pitch and learn some new skills, find out more about our Futsal programme here. We’ll see you on the pitch.