Dubai: One of the top Fifa officials is confident of beach soccer making it as an Olympic sport in time for the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Games.

The International Olympic Committee (IOC) was initially scheduled to take up the inclusion of certain sports at the Olympic Games in September, but this has now been postponed till early next year.

Since then, Fifa President Sepp Blatter has discussed this issue with Rio 2016 chief organiser Carlos Nuzman and the legendary Pele has also joined in to voice his willingness in having beach soccer as one of the new sports.

Brazil is the most successful beach soccer nation with 13 world titles, but Russia are the current world champions after first beating Brazil in the 2011 final in Ravenna, Italy followed by a second crown in Tahiti earlier this summer.

“Being in the Olympic Games is our dream and Rio would be the most perfect venue,” Joan Cusco, Fifa Board Member and Vice-President of Beach Soccer Worldwide (BSW), the company that develops and runs Beach Soccer all over the world, told Gulf News. “We’ve had some talks with the IOC, and now with a new president [Tomas Bach] we are more hopeful this dream will come true. The selling point for us will be to focus on bringing in younger sports into the Olympic Games.

“We have been doing a lot of thinking in how to make this dream come true. The IOC has always had this stance that there should not be more than 10,000 athletes at an Olympic Games. For this we have wonderful suggestions wherein we can either have the number of athletes increased to 11,000 or cut out on certain sports that have a high intake of athletes but not too much of relevance in this day and age.”

Luckily, the election of Bach has come at an opportune moment for beach soccer as the German has shown an openness unlike his predecessor Jacques Rogge.

“We will be sitting with the IOC officials including Bach early in 2014 and we intend to have some serious conversation with them,” Cusco said. “Fifa is strongly behind the inclusion of beach soccer and this is the most important thing for us at this moment.

“We should have some concrete news by March or April next year.”