Indoor Football Association

The Indoor Football Association is the governing body for major indoor football competitions which was set up in 2003.
Creation
The association was set up in September 2003 and the first competition it oversaw was the All-England Indoor Football Championship which has run every year since then.
The Beginning
The founders; Marcus Harney and Christopher Reid, wanted to create a tournament that would be well publicized but anyone could join. They went about advertising their inaugural tournament in April 2003 and the response was vast, with 157 teams originally seeking entry, although this was later whittled down to 128. The tournament was a success and people all over the country were made aware of it. It was then that association was set up.
Formation
They decided that the name of the association would the Indoor Football Association, a play on Englands football governing body, the Football Association.
The association was set up on September 13, 2003. The founders then went about planning for their next tournaments.
It was originally intended to be for only English tournaments.
The Home Nations
After 2 years of competitions in England, the IFA decided to branch into Ireland, Scotland and Wales. They advertised a new tournament, the Home Nations Indoor Football Challenge. It was a huge success with over 400 participants. This tournament ran for 2 years.
Europe and Beyond
In late 2007, the IFA decided they would branch out into Europe creating a European Cup of indoor football. The competition was for clubs only. They publicized the competition in the UK and Ireland and in major European cities. In it's inaugural tournament, there were 700 applicants (mainly from the home nations), although, only 64 of these could be accepted. The second year of the competition became even more famous.
It was two years later that IFA went international. The founders got a message from a man in America asking if they would be running any competitions over there and this prompted the IFA to begin running competitions world-wide. With 4 months, the first competitions were taking place in major cities, including New York, Tokyo, Melbourne and Cape Town.
The association had gone truly global and in 2010 held it's inaugural Indoor Soccer World Cup.
Tournaments
There have been several tournaments all over the world that have been organaised by the IFA.
England
The All-England Indoor Football Championship was the IFA's first tournament which took place from June 2 until August 22, 2003. In it's first year 157 teams applied, although only 128 were allowed to enter. The tournament has the same format until this day.
Entrants are accepted on a first come, first served basis, which many find unfair but as the IFA have no regional associations they cannot hold qualifiers. The 128 members play a one legged qualification match against another randomly drawn team. The winner passes to round 2 where the same format is applied. When only 32 teams are remaining, two-legged play offs are held. The first leg takes place at a northern indoor football arena and the second leg takes place at an arena in the south of England. This is used to give a home and leg advantage to teams, although this format has been criticized as several teams may be from the midlands and both legs can be seen as away legs. When 16 teams remain, they must assemble at pre-determined venue for the finals.
At the finals, the teams are drawn into groups of four. Group matches are played, with group A playing first, then group B, etc.
The top 2 teams from each group are entered into the quarter finals, the winners progress to the semi-finals and the winners then move onto the final with the winner being the champion.
Home Nations
The Scottish Indoor Football Championship and the 'Irish Indoor Championship have the same format as the All-England competition.
The Welsh competition, the Welsh Indoor Football Cup begins with only 64 teams but the format remains the same. This is the same with the Northern Irish Indoor Football Championship.
More competitions were later set up. These all have the same format as the All-England tournament. The competitions are; The Anglo-Welsh Indoor Football Cup, Cupann na hÉireann: Indoor Football Championship, the Scots/Welsh Indoor Cup, Anglo-Éireann Cup and the Scots/Irish Indoor Cup.
All of these tournaments were set up to give each country the chance to play against each other, although these inter-country competitions ended with the introduction of the Celtic and English Indoor Football Trophy and the UK and Ireland Indoor Cup. The latter was for lesser teams who weren't good enough for the earlier. Each of these tournaments have the same format as the All-England.
Europe
In Spring 2008, the European Indoor Football Cup began, it had the same format as other competitions but had a premliminary round as the competition began with 256 competitors.
Also, this competition operated on a first come, first served basis but in a different way. Each country had a number spots for entry, and once these were filled, no more teams from that country could entry. This resulted in some teams entering under different names and posing to be from different countries to gain access.
World
The first competition outside Europe took place in late 2009 with the All-America Indoor Soccer Tournament and there were more to follow with the competition taking place with the exact same format as the original all over the world in cities such as Tokyo, New York, Cape Town, Toronto, Rio, Hong Kong and more. Tournaments took place in 92 countries.
International
The first IFA indoor soccer world cup took place in February 2010. The team who would represent their country was the team who won that country's most recent indoor football tournament. Only countries who had a tournament in their county could enter. It had the same format as the original All-England tournament, but this time rather than it being first-come, first-served, they had qualifiers.
There were 72 applicants. Only 16 would be accepted for the final one-day tournament. The last 16 teams to seek entry to the tournament were made play a play-off round. This would be played in London on January 19, 2010. The eight winning teams were allowed entry to the first IFA World Cup.
Home and away legs were played, these were played in the home and away's country rather than at the same arena as before. This was much more costly, but was felt as if it was required to make it fair. The IFA paid for all travel expenses.
The final 16 teams would play in the IFA Indoor Soccer World Cup or Indoor World Cup as it was more commonly known.
The final 16 teams were (in order of IFA World Ranking):
Spain, England, Brazil, USA, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Cameroon, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Saudi Arabia and Argentina.
The IFA were said to be happy that competing countries were very widespread and when commenting on rumors of easy-draws being made for the home nations which resulted in them being in the finals they merely said that they were more likely to be in there as they had been playing for longer.
The final took place in London on February 13, 2010. Spain won the tournament, beating England 4-2 in the final.
European Indoor Cup
In September 2010, the inaugural IFA European Indoor Cup will take place. It will contain the top rated 16 teams in Europe.
It was confirmed in January 2010 that six teams will automatically qualify; the top 4 European sides in the World Cup, the host and the winning team in the 2010 Celtic and English Indoor Trophy. Since Ireland (who would host the competition) won the C&E Indoor Trophy, runner's up Northern Ireland would qualify for the finals.
Qualification ended for the European tournement on June 12, 2010. Qualification was carried out by drawing the 28 willing participants into groups. For each country to be able to enter, the must have set up their own Indoor Football Association board, to do so, they must have gotten into contact with the IFA.
The teams who will compete in the IFA 2010 European Indoor Cup are (in order of qualification date):
Ireland (host), Northern Ireland (Celtic/English winner), Spain (Indoor World Cup), England (IWC), Italy (IWC), Germany (IWC), Scotland, Sweden, Norway, Russia, Croatia, Greece, Holland, Poland, Serbia and Portugal.
Logo
When originally created, the IFA had no logo. The first logo (right) was introduced in March 2005, before their newest competitions that would be taking place all over the UK and Ireland. The logo contained the Union flag as well as the Irish flag and had the words Indoor Football Association and the motto Football for everyone.
The second IFA logo (left) was introduced on January 1, 2008, and was a plain and simple logo with only the association's initials, IFA, on it. They changed the logo from the Union Flag one as the logo would be used all over Europe.
The current logo (top of page) was introduced on January 1, 2010. It would be used in the first IFA World Cup. It was meant to spoof the FIFA 2010 World Cup logo while also being professional enough looking to use for the foreseeable future.
Members of IFA
There are 92 members of the IFA. Below, 25 are shown (in order of IFA rankings):
Spain, England, Brazil, USA, Italy, Germany, Portugal, Japan, Cameroon, Ireland, Scotland, Australia, Canada, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Argentina, China, Iran, New Zealand, Mexico, Peru, Wales, Northern Ireland, France, Cyprus and Costa Rica.
Board of IFA
The board of the IFA contains 9 people.
President: Marcus Harney, Vice-President: Christopher Reid, Home Nations Chief: David O'Leary, European Chief: Arnold Ryan, Asian Chief: Lee Khan, North American Chief: Lesley Browne, South American Chief: Enrique Santos, African Chief: Laura Bentley, Australian Chief: Eric Winters.

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