{"id":40898,"date":"2016-02-23T10:54:45","date_gmt":"2016-02-23T15:54:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=40898"},"modified":"2016-02-23T10:54:45","modified_gmt":"2016-02-23T15:54:45","slug":"safira-fc-joins-major-league-futsal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=40898","title":{"rendered":"Safira FC Joins Major League Futsal"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" data-attachment-id=\"39714\" data-permalink=\"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?attachment_id=39714\" data-orig-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?fit=600%2C415&amp;ssl=1\" data-orig-size=\"600,415\" data-comments-opened=\"1\" data-image-meta=\"{&quot;aperture&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;credit&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;camera&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;caption&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;created_timestamp&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;copyright&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;focal_length&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;iso&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;shutter_speed&quot;:&quot;0&quot;,&quot;title&quot;:&quot;&quot;,&quot;orientation&quot;:&quot;0&quot;}\" data-image-title=\"Safira-2\" data-image-description=\"\" data-image-caption=\"\" data-medium-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?fit=300%2C208&amp;ssl=1\" data-large-file=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?fit=600%2C415&amp;ssl=1\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-39714\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?resize=600%2C415\" alt=\"Safira-2\" width=\"600\" height=\"415\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?w=600&amp;ssl=1 600w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?resize=300%2C208&amp;ssl=1 300w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 600px) 100vw, 600px\" data-recalc-dims=\"1\" \/><\/p>\n<p>Commonwealth futsal power Safira FC will be taking its exploits to the national level this year after they joined the 32-team Major League Futsal (MLF) on Monday.<\/p>\n<p>Safira will join MLF, which was founded in December 2015,\u00a0ahead of its inaugural\u00a0season. The club will compete in the league&#8217;s Eastern Region, which includes Toronto United, Sporting Maryland, BNC Revolution, and Northern Virginia NPC.<\/p>\n<p>The news of the club&#8217;s intentions to join a national outfit comes less than two weeks\u00a0after it claimed <a href=\"http:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/?p=40845\">a record\u00a0seventh-straight regional title<\/a> at the 2016 U.S. Futsal Northeast Regional Championship.<\/p>\n<p>Prior to Monday&#8217;s announcement, Safira, which has claimed three national championships since 2009, had been previously limited to playing in local and regional tournaments. Safira striker Alencar Junior told <em>NESoccerToday.com<\/em> in December that <a href=\"http:\/\/I think it\u2019s growing, and it\u2019s going to grow more. And hopefully we\u2019ll have a league, and hopefully, I won\u2019t have to wait until I\u2019m in my 40s or something, so hopefully sooner than that.\u201d\">he hoped a proper national futsal league would be formed before long.<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&#8220;I think (futsal) is growing, and it\u2019s going to grow more,&#8221; Junior said. &#8220;And hopefully we\u2019ll have a league, and hopefully, I won\u2019t have to wait until I\u2019m in my 40s or something, so hopefully sooner than that.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>MLF has not yet released its regular season schedule, though it originally had plans to start in March. The league is comprised of four conferences, and boasts clubs in Mexico in addition to the U.S. and Canada.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Boston-based Safira FC will compete in the 32-team Major Futsal League USA this year. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":39714,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[1400],"tags":[1406,1453,368,892],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/nesoccertoday.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/12\/Safira-2.png?fit=600%2C415&ssl=1","jetpack_likes_enabled":false,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40898"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=40898"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40898\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40901,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40898\/revisions\/40901"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/39714"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=40898"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=40898"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/nesoccertoday.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=40898"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}