KarunaNews Story

Among the sports that has attracted most interest in the 2024 Paris Paralympics is blind soccer. B1 soccer is played on a rectangular field, the same standard as 5-a-side football/futsal (40 meters long by 20 meters wide). Along the field are 1- to 1.3-meter-high boards that prevent the ball from leaving the playing area. Each team consists of four movement players (all of them blind) and a goalkeeper (sighted or visually impaired), who remains in his own 2-meter-deep area but can guide his teammates by giving directions when defending. No one speaks during the game because the ball itself is constructed with rattles sewn between the inner tube and the outer shell, which allow blind players to envision its location. Each B1 5-a-side soccer match is divided into two halves of 20 minutes each, with an intermediate break of up to 10 minutes. The first 5-a-side blind soccer competitions took place in South America, in Brazil in 1980.