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Beach soccer, also known as beach football, sand football or sand soccer, is a variant of association football played on a beach or some form of sand between two teams of five players each.
Association football has long been played informally on beaches. Beach soccer was introduced in 1992 as an effort to codify rules for the game by the founders of Beach Soccer Worldwide, a company set up to develop the sport and responsible for the majority of its tournaments. FIFA has held the Beach Soccer World Cup biennially since 2005.
The first international matches were played in 1993 for men and 2009 for women. there are 193 men's and 64 women's clubs and 101 men's and 23 women's national teams sorted in the Beach Soccer Worldwide Rankings.
Beach soccer had been played recreationally for years and in different formats. In 1992, the laws of the game were envisioned and a pilot event was staged by the founding partners of Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW) in Los Angeles, and the sport was adopted by Beach Soccer Los Angeles in 2017, being played all around Los Angeles County. By 1993, the first professional beach soccer competition was organized at Miami Beach with teams from the United States, Brazil, Argentina and Italy taking part.
In April 1994, the first event to be covered by network television transmissions was held on Copacabana Beach in Rio de Janeiro, and the city hosted the first Beach Soccer World Championship in 1995. The competition was won by the host nation, making Brazil the first-ever world champions of Beach Soccer. Commercial interest began to match developments on the field, and growing demand for the sport around the world gave rise to the Pro Beach Soccer Tour in 1996.
The first Pro Beach Soccer Tour included a total of 60 games in two years across South America, Europe, Asia and the United States. Interest generated by the tour in Europe led to the creation of the European Pro Beach Soccer League in 1998, providing a more solid infrastructure that would increase the professionalism of the spectacle. EPBSL, now known as the Euro Beach Soccer League, brought promoters together from across the continent and satisfied the demands of the media, sponsors and fans. Four years on from its creation, the first step in the building of a legitimate worldwide competition structure for the sport of pro beach soccer had been taken.
Behind the scenes developments were also taking place, with the Beach Soccer Company relocating its headquarters to Europe, firstly to Monaco and then Barcelona, before becoming Pro Beach Soccer, S.L. in April 2000. One year later, they would join forces with Octagon Koch Tavares (who had continued to organise the World Championships and events in South America) to form a single entity known as Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSWW), with the aim of unifying all major Pro Beach Soccer tournaments in the world under the same structure and providing representation of the sport to major sponsors, the media and FIFA.
The next four years would see this growth consolidated by further progress both on and off the field. By 2004, some 17 nations had entered teams, contributing to vastly expanded television coverage of beach soccer and unprecedented demand from promoters in more than seventy countries looking to stage events. This growing interest has enabled BSWW to secure sponsorship deals with international companies such as Coca-Cola, McDonald's, and Mastercard, the latter of which increased its involvement in 2004 by becoming the title sponsor of the Euro Beach Soccer League.
FIFA became the global governing body of the sport in 2005 and organized the first FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup. The 2006 CONCACAF Beach Soccer Championship served as a qualification tournament for the 2006 FIFA Beach Soccer World Cup. The CONCACAF tournament saw the United States emerge victorious, defeating Canada in the final. It played a key role in the development of beach soccer within the region, showcasing emerging talent and promoting the sport's growth.
FIFA has recognized Beach Soccer Worldwide as the major entity behind the creation and growth of beach soccer, forming a "highly promising" partnership that was seen "in its full splendour" in the 2005 World Cup, held in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro. France won the first World Cup, and the next year Brazil won it at the same venue. The World Cup has continued to flourish with the first held outside of Brazil in 2008 and future World Cups spreading as far out as Tahiti in 2013 and Portugal in 2015.
In the late 2010s, significant strides were made in the development of beach soccer in the United States. A team based in South Florida called the Florida Beach Soccer FC, coached by former professional soccer player Chris Antonopoulos along with other beach soccer national team players like Francis Farberoff, Benyam Astorga and Oscar Gil, achieved success on the national and international stages, including a victory at the North American Sand Soccer Championships (NASSC) in 2011 and again in 2012.
The NASSC gained international prominence with the participation of FC Barcelona's beach soccer team, which clinched titles in 2015 and 2017. This period also saw increased participation in high-profile events such as the Clearwater Beach Soccer Tournament, part of the Major Beach Soccer National Championship Series sponsored by the United Soccer League, which bolstered the sport's visibility and competitiveness.
As of 2022, neither FIFA nor the other five continental regions host major women's beach soccer tournaments. The Asian Beach Games, European Games and South American Beach Games also do not have women's beach soccer tournaments.
The field is rectangular in shape and the touchline is longer than the goal line. The field dimensions are:
The penalty area is at a distance of from the goal and is marked by two yellow flags placed outside the field and next to the touchlines. Two red flags opposite each other are at the centre of the field to represent the halfway line. The goals are smaller than their standard association football counterparts, being from the ground to the bottom of the crossbar and in width between the inside of each upright.
Penalty card are also used in beach soccer. Unlike in association football, a team can bring on a substitute to replace a dismissed player after two minutes have elapsed. However, as in futsal, this period of numerical advantage ends early if the penalised team concedes a goal.
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Beach Soccer Worldwide (1993-2020)
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> The Roon Ba (2010-2020)
target="_blank" rel="nofollow"> Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) - FIFA.com (Results in Team Profile)
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