Your guide to blind football

five aside football or blind football as it is also known brings the beautiful game to the paralympics a relatively new paralympic sport fighters like football first featured in the 2004 paralympics in athens with just six nations competing since then however the sport has grown to be one of the most popular at the games and in the world brazil are the reigning paralympic champion and indeed have won all paralympic gold medals since 2004 [Applause] it's fast technical and tense this is your guide to five aside football there are five players per team four outfield players and a goalkeeper the aim of the sport is to score a goal by kicking the ball into your opponent's goal and at the end of the game whether scored most wins players must wear eye shades to ensure that all players have the same level of vision that is apart from the goalkeepers who aren't required to wear eye shades and can be fully sighted their job is to keep the ball from going in the goal behind them but how do the players on the field know where the ball or indeed the goal is well the ball in blind football is specially designed to make sound whenever it moves also each team has a guide behind the opposition goal to help direct them each player is required to shout voy when going for the ball this ensures every player has the cues they need to help build a picture of what's going on and what to do next in defence or attack to help this total silence is required from the crowd until a goal goes in boy is spanish for go and it was the spanish who were credited with originally developing blind football in the 1920s as well as the paralympics teams from all corners of the world can compete at world european asian african and americas championships as well as a world grand prix blind football can be played by both men and women with the historic first women's world championships coming up in 2023 so what are you waiting for give it a try