From International Futsal to Fife

In 2014, St Andrews sent an alumni fundraising email to its graduates, outlining plans to rebuild the Sports Centre, listing the new sports it hoped to offer, and making the customary request for donations. Some gave what they could. Many more closed the tab. Nigel Shields offered to start a club. 

That club was futsal, and year after year, it has punched well above its weight. Twelve years on, Shields is back in St Andrews, and he remains one of the main reasons a group of students drives a frankly unreasonable distance most Sundays to play a 40-minute match. 

Now, more than a decade on, Shields reflects on the club’s beginnings and what brought him back. 

“Back in 2014, I received a university email unveiling plans to rebuild the Sports Centre,” he said. Futsal was among the sports listed, and Shields, a qualified coach on the pathway to a UEFA Futsal licence, decided he wanted to offer more than money. “I reasoned I could help more by donating time to help introduce and develop futsal at St Andrews. Hopefully I’ve been proved right!” 

It’s hard to argue he hasn’t. When he arrived, there was no club to speak of. Two years ago, both the men’s and women’s sides won Tier 1 of Scottish British Universities and Colleges Sport (BUCS) in the same season. 

From the outset, his goal was “to offer men and women the unhindered opportunity to enjoy and excel at futsal and reap the multiple benefits of the sport.” Two titles in one season would suggest he has managed it. 

Shields came to the sport from an unlikely direction. Like most of us, he grew up playing football, but found it “tactically dull with not enough involvement.” Indoor five-a-side was better, though its “archaic rules and a giant tennis ball” did little for him. Then he watched a Futsal World Cup match on Eurosport “and was a convert.” 

Since graduating in Mathematics at St Andrews, he has had an array of, as he put it, “left field” job opportunities. 

The biggest of those was with England, where he worked as a performance analyst under Head Coach Mike Skubala. Shields’ first list of players, ranked by observed quality, was headed by someone not even in the starting five: a young academy reject named Max Kilman. Eight years later, Kilman was a Premier League centre-back, and West Ham paid £40 million for him. 

“Who says playing futsal can’t improve a player!” Shields said. 

Increasingly, nobody. Ronaldinho, Neymar, and Messi all grew up on the small-sided game, and a growing number of English academies now put their young players on futsal courts. The appeal is straightforward: tighter space, a heavier ball, more touches, and less time on it.

Ask Shields what he is proudest of, though, and he passes over Kilman and the silverware altogether. It’s “being told by graduates how much futsal played a part in their time at St Andrews,” and still being in touch with many of them today. 

Photo Credit: St Andrews Futsal Club