Interview with Bruno Coutinho, former Indian football captain

Bruno Coutinho is a former Indian national football team captain, and the director of Barefoot 2013, a tournament being held in Goa during 5-10 February, 2013. Sportskeeda caught up with the former player for a quick chat about the tournament, and the future of the game.

What exactly is your association with Transstadia, and what role are you going to be playing at the Barefoot 2013 – the Beach Soccer Tournament?

I am going to be the director at this event, and will be taking care of everything, from registrations to managing referees. So far we have around 60 teams, but we are expecting close to 80.

How was your experience representing India at the 2007 FIFA beach soccer World Cup qualifiers?

The AIFF said they were interested in sending a beach soccer team to Dubai for the World Cup qualifiers. So myself, along with a mixture of retired and young footballers, decided to test our skills. We weren’t well educated about the sport, so we hired a coach from Germany to help us out. We played first against UAE, the current champions, who we managed to keep quiet for most of the game but ended up losing to at the end. Japan, who were the runners-up, managed to just edge us by one goal, which was very surprising because no one expected us to put up a fight like that. So it was a good first experience. We put on a decent fight.

How different is beach soccer from football, in terms of fitness and gameplay?

Beach soccer is very physically demanding, and is a high intensity game considering it’s much harder to run on sand than on turf. Each game lasts 36 minutes, and is split up into three periods of 12 minutes each, with a 3 minute break between periods.

Where do you see beach soccer heading in India? Will we see more of such tournaments in the future? Also, do you consider beach soccer as the IPL of soccer?

My intention is to take beach soccer to great heights in India. I have done my bit for football, and I think right now I want to give my all for beach soccer, which is currently one of the fastest growing sports in the world.

Transstadia has the rights to the tournament right now, which is good because we finally have the means to get beach soccer up and running in a country that has huge potential. We will be scouting for players, and there is already a huge buzz in my city in regard to this tournament. I hope this tournament serves its purpose, and we generate a good fanbase for this sport.