Between September 12th and October 3th, the world's best futsal players will descend on Lithuania to compete in the FIFA Futsal World Cup. This competition, like the Olympics and the UEFA Euro finals, was postponed by a year due to the global pandemic, but now the courts in Vilnius, Klaipeda and Kaunas are open.
(photo credit: Culture Trip)
This will be the Baltic state's first time hosting a FIFA tournament, with brand-new arenas in three cities ready to welcome fans. It's also the first FIFA Futsal World Cup to be held in Europe in 24 years.
24 teams representing six confederations from around the world, from Angola to Vietnam, Argentina to Uzbekistan, Guatemala to Portugal, seek to claim the golden trophy (pictured above, photo credit: UEFA.com).
The first match of the group stage will take place on Sunday, September 12 at 6AM between Russia and Egypt, and hosts Lithuania will take on Venezuela later that day at 10AM.
The United States team's first showing in the tournament since 2008 will begin against defending world champions Argentina on Tuesday, September 14 at 10AM. It will be a real test for the US, and a chance to show how futsal has evolved in the States over the past decade. (see below for the US team's group stage draw, with more details here)
Six groups of four teams each to start, and the top two teams in each group will advance to the Round of 16. Games can be streamed live in the US on Fox Sports (FS1).