Qualla: 2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: Introduction

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Abdolreza Karimizadeh scored thirteen times. That is the single statistic that most clearly belongs to the 2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships, held over ten days that October and November at the Dutch national sports center at Papendal, just outside Arnhem. Karimizadeh played for Iran, a perennial force in cerebral palsy football, and his thirteen goals across the tournament are the kind of number that does not quite fit the spreadsheets people use for ordinary football. The whole tournament had that quality: a sport played by athletes whose neurological conditions affect their movement, on a smaller pitch with seven on a side, contested with a seriousness and skill that the wider football world has consistently struggled to register.

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: What the Sport Is

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

CP football, or seven-a-side football, is played by athletes whose motor control has been affected by non-progressive brain injury: cerebral palsy itself, traumatic brain injury, or the after-effects of stroke. The rules are adapted from FIFA's: seven players a side instead of el...

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: Papendal and Ten Days in Autumn

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

The 2009 Championships ran from 23 October to 1 November. The venues were grouped around Papendal, the Dutch national training center tucked into the wooded ridges between Arnhem and Oosterbeek. Papendal is the spiritual home of high-performance sport in the Netherlands, a place ...

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: The Scorers

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Karimizadeh's thirteen goals topped the chart. Behind him came Brazil's Renato Lima and Wanderson Silva de Oliveira and Russia's Ivan Pothekin, each with eight; Iran's Bahman Ansari with seven; and a clutch of five-goal scorers including Ukraine's Anatolii Shevchyk, the Netherlan...

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: The Format and What It Asked

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Twelve teams were drawn into four groups of three, played a round robin, and split into upper and lower halves for a second group stage. The top eight then progressed into knockout matches for placings one through eight; the lower group played out positions nine through thirteen....

2009 CPISRA Football 7-a-side International Championships: What Stayed Behind

Sat, 16 May 2026 00:00:00 GMT

CPISRA itself, the Cerebral Palsy International Sports and Recreation Association, has since restructured its football arm. The sport is now governed by the International Federation of Cerebral Palsy Football, the IFCPF, which runs the modern World Championships and Paralympic qu...