Dueling Soccer Tournaments Hit South Beach This Weekend

South Florida loves its soccer. It's the favorite sport of much of our imposing Hispanic population, undoubtedly number one among our European imports, and, of course, tops for our sexy soccer moms. Even so, we didn't know just how much Miami loved soccer until we looked at what's going on in South Beach this weekend.

That's when we noticed that two separately organized soccer tournaments would be taking place simultaneously on South Beach. Actually they'll be played less than a mile from one another on the sand. To that we say, huh?

Organizers from the Beach Soccer Worldwide Tournament between 20 and

22nd St. acknowledged that their tournament had nothing to do with the

Pro Footvolley tournament between 7th and 8th Street on Lummus Park. The

Beach soccer tournament will use the stadium already in place for the

Beach Polo tournament from the past weekend, while the footvolley

tournament uses the beach volleyball area.

Sure both games use a soccer ball, both originated in Brazil, and have

international tours, but they do have their differences. Beach Soccer is

essentially a smaller version of regular game only with 5 players on

each team, including the goalie, and of course it's played on sand.

The

difficulty of controlling a rolling soccer ball on the beach encourages

players to keep the ball in the air. Unlike the regular game, which is

often slow paced and low scoring, beach soccer teams shoot an average of

every 30 seconds and score about 9 goals a game. The Beach Soccer

tournaments starts Friday and pits teams from the USA, Mexico, Brazil,

and Spain against each other.

Footvolley, on the other hand, is hybrid of soccer and volleyball with two

player teams playing volleyball, only with their feet. It's similar to the popular Asian sport sepak takraw, except footvolley uses a

regular soccer ball and regular volleyball nets. Organizers describe the

sport as "extreme volleyball" and say the sport, which will be going

around to four other cities after Miami Beach, was given a make-over,

South Beach style.

Both tournaments have a South Beach party feel to them with music,

scantily glad women cheering, and booze - they are on the beach, after

all. We won't recommend one or the other. Instead, we suggest checking

them both out. They're just blocks away from one another. And both are

free.

Visit beachsoccer.com for more information.

between 7th and 8th Street. For more information visit footvolley.net.

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