Chen Xinhua of China, one of the greatest players in the history of the sport, married a lovely Yorkshire woman and moved to England. It was rumored that he wanted to retire from table tennis, but after a long conversation he agreed to coach me. Within minutes of getting together at a small training hall on the outskirts of Reading, it became apparent that his concept of practice bore no relation to anything I had yet seen or imagined. Instead of playing against each other with a single ball, he took a bucket of a hundred balls (rather like Richard Williams, father of Venus and Serena, in tennis), placed them beside the table, and then proceeded to fire them at me from different angles, at different speeds, with different spins, but always (and this was the ultimate revelation of his genius for coaching) calibrated so as to be constantly nudging the outer limits of my speed, movement, technique, anticipation, timing, and agility.
— ❐ Bounce
The Talent Code alerted many to its extraordinary effectiveness: One reason [for the success of futsal] lies in the math. Futsal players touch the ball far more often than soccer players—six times more often per minute, according to a Liverpool University study.
[...]
As Dr. Miranda [professor of soccer at the University of São Paolo] summed up, “No time plus no space equals better skills. Futsal is our national laboratory of improvisation.”
— ❐ Bounce