Indoor Soccer: Less Filling or Tastes Great?

By: Sean | January 15th, 2009

With the daylight hours scarce and the weather cold and foul, football fans here around the north 45th parallel briefly adjourn from the frozen/waterlogged/horribly overused pitches and seek our fix in slightly warmer environs. Come winter, we go from the Beautiful Game to the Kind of Pretty But Has a Great Personality Game: Indoor soccer.

Make no mistake, I love indoor soccer. I love not chasing the ball across busy streets when the defender clears it out of touch–and I love not getting honked at by passing trucks to the derogatory chorus of “Soccer Sucks!” (What can I say? Our pitch is in a rough neighborhood.) I love the fact that I can sub out after two minutes and no one will think less of me. The rebounds off the dasher boards…the one on one pile-ups against the glass in the near corner by the snack bar…the electronic scoreboard that forever eludes us in outdoor soccer. I even love the regular collection of “scab” players who never sign up for a team because they have to pay and instead wait for a team to be short before asking if they need an extra player–what a fantastic soccer subculture! It’s all good. As long as I live, the heady aroma of popcorn, sweat, and cold concrete will forever take me back to Wednesday nights at my local indoor soccer arena and those associations are overwhelmingly positive.

But…it just isn’t the same as outdoor.

Rattling the inside of the cage with a bullet shot in indoor is still a rush, but I would trade an indoor hat trick for an outdoor tap-in any day of the week. The slickest indoor passing sequence won’t last much longer in the memory than a week or two but I can remember the build-up to almost three-quarters of all the goals my outdoor club Rangers netted last fall, even if I wasn’t involved in the play. I can’t quite put my finger on why I feel this way, either. It’s definitely not because one sport is “easier” than the other and the ability to play off the walls adds an exciting dimension to the game. I certainly don’t try any less hard when I play indoor. Perhaps the higher score lines somehow diminish the significance of each individual goal. Perhaps the lack of slide tackles removes one crucial facet of the game as a whole. I guess I look at my Wednesday night indoor matches as great practice for the outdoor season, a way to stay in shape, a chance to hang with my football buddies regularly (burns more calories than poker night), and slyly recruit for my outdoor team.

So I find a guy playing indoor who appears to meet my two basic requirements for Rangers:
1. Gives 100% both up and back, and;
2. Is not a dick.
I ask if they are playing outdoor soccer, hear that they are not, and make my not quite-patented recruiting pitch about the Greatest O-30 Third Division Men’s Adult Team in the Greater Portland, Oregon Area. They nod along as I talk about our league successes, our Junior Ranger kids club, our hot spouses, potlucks, blah blah blah. I feel like I have them on the hook and start to reel them in. Team website! Home pitch! Summer picnic! I get a smile, maybe a “cool!” I can just about see this guy in the ‘Gers yellow kit when they suddenly say, “thanks a lot, you guys sound really awesome, but I really don’t like playing outdoor soccer.”

WTF?! How can this be? Momentarily flummoxed, I ask (politely, of course) why they don’t like outdoor soccer. Their reasons have been pretty genuine and, if I stretch, I can kind of see their point. I don’t want to risk blowing my ACL out on a reckless tackle by a mediocre player and get saddled with surgery and insurance costs for six months. I want to keep my weekends free to do other sports or spend time with my family. I don’t like to run for ninety minutes ’cause I’m not in great shape. Softball season (shudder!) They usually finish with some variation of “…and that’s why I like indoor soccer better.” I’ve heard this enough times to know that there appears to be a sizable percentage of the recreational football community who feels this way.

So how about you, Weekend Warriors? Is indoor soccer less filling or tastes great? Do you prefer to keep your footie out of doors or do you like to put ‘em on the glass? I’d love to hear why you love or loathe indoor soccer. Also, I’d like to know if indoor soccer is as popular a recreational game outside the United States. I know futsal has a wide following in other countries, but I don’t know about indoor soccer, so feel free to comment. (Plus, I love seeing the different country flag icons on the “Comments” posts at the end of the section.) Cheers!

Note: I figured out how to insert images! Score!