Beach soccer, also known as beach football or beasal, is a variant of association football played on a beach or some form of sand. The game emphasises skill, agility and shooting at goal.
Whilst association football has been played informally on beaches for many years, the introduction of beach football was an attempt to codify rules for the game. This was done in 1992 by the founders of Beach Soccer Worldwide, a company set up to develop the sport and responsible for the majority of its tournaments to this day. This was a major foundation for what is now known as beach football and what has led to the sport rapidly growing in popularity.
The irregularity of the soft-sand playing surface leads to a totally different style of play than is used in association football, with a greater degree of improvisation. The compact pitch, much smaller than a normal association football pitch, allows players to score from anywhere on the sand, leading to an average of sixty attempts at goal in a single game. With an average of scoring rate of one goal every three or four minutes, around eleven goals are scored in total per game.
Famous quotes containing the words beach and/or soccer:
“Across the lonely beach we flit,
One little sandpiper and I;
And fast I gather, bit by bit,
The scattered driftwood, bleached and dry.
The wild waves reach their hands for it,
The wild wind raves, the tide runs high,
As up and down the beach we flit—
One little sandpiper and I.”
—Celia Thaxter (”Laighton”)
“If we were doing this in the Falklands they would love it. It’s part of our heritage. The British have always been fighting wars.”
—British soccer fan. quoted in Independent (London, Dec. 23, 1988)