Freestyle Football ⚽

This blog post is about one of my hobbies: freestyle football (soccer). I’ll stick with the former term since it’s what is most commonly used. I will explain what it is and go over its origin and storied history.

What is freestyle football?

In essence, freestyle is performing skillful tricks with a football. Just like in regular football, you can’t use your hands. This post focuses exclusively on lower-body freestyle (lowers)—that is, tricks done with the feet while standing. The are two other branches of freestyle: uppers—tricks done with the head, neck, and upper body—and sit-downs—tricks performed while seated on the ground. My interest in freestyle is more or less limited to lowers, so that is what this article will focus on.

I discovered freestyle football on YouTube in 2006, when I was 10 years old. I instantly fell in love. I actually have footage of myself practicing freestyle tricks at the end of my driveway at 11 and 12 years old. Here is the first video that I vividly remember watching as a 10 year old (uploaded August, 2006):

History

Freestyle football has been around for a long time – Diego Maradona used to perform freestyle tricks in his warm ups in the 1980’s, and it existed well before then. So where do we start?

In 2006, Nike started an advertisement campaign called Joga Bonito—meaning “play beautifully”—that focused on freestyle and street football. These ads are important because they exposed freestyle football to a massive audience. I remember watching them as a kid. Many of them featured Brazilian players such as Ronaldinho and Ronaldo, and for many, it was their first time ever seeing freestyle.

But perhaps a better starting point is even before this, when a video of a Dutch freestyler named Soufiane Touzani was uploaded to YouTube in 2005. Touzani created a new trick (now called “Touzani around the world”) by combining an around the world and a crossover. This creation hinted at a vast landscape of possibilities for new tricks.

Freestyle spread and developed through the early internet, with freestylers from all over the world contributing by showcasing their own style, pushing the limits, and creating new tricks. People started to view freestyle as an art that is separate from football, one that requires hours and hours of dedicated practice. Here is a 2007 video by freestyle-pioneer Palle:

The first Superball was held in 2007. This is an annual freestyle-battle competition sponsored by Red Bull. The winner of each year is declared world champion. Superball features a format similar to breakdance (three rounds of 30 seconds for each freestyler). Every year there is also an online lowers tournament called PACT. I recommend watching the finals videos, as they are some of the best freestyle videos ever. Here is the PACT 8 finals video by Russian freestyler Alekseev:

How Freestyle Works (Technical Details)

The starting point for lowers is keepy-ups, also known as juggling. Keepy-ups are performed by kicking the ball in the air repeatedly without letting it touch the ground. You should alternate feet with every touch of the ball so that you stay balanced and have maximum control.

There are just a couple basic tricks that form the foundation of all lower-body freestyle—in the sense that every trick is comprised of some combination of these basic movements. It is analogous to skateboarding: just as the ollie is fundamental to hundreds of skateboarding tricks, the around the world is fundamental to hundreds of freestyle tricks. To perform an around the world you hit the ball into the air and perform a single revolution around the ball with the same foot before striking it again. We classify tricks by the number of revolutions involved. An around the world is a 1-revolution trick. A crossover is considered a half revolution. This is the other fundamental trick. To perform a crossover you kick the ball into the air and cross the opposite leg over the ball, and then hit the ball while hopping. There are two other fundamental 1-rev tricks, but they are just subtle variations of around the world: hop the world and half around the world.

1. around the world (atw)
2. crossover (co)
3. hop the world
4. half around the world (hatw)

Here is a what these basic tricks look like, performed here in a combo:

Combo: hatw – hatw – atw – atw – htw – htw – htw – htw – htw. I then break the combo by taking a touch, before performing another combo: atw – htw.

Combos are performed by continuously chaining tricks together, just like in the above video. The main goal in lower freestyle is to create beautiful combos.

So far we have only seen basic tricks. Let’s construct a more advanced trick by combining fundamental tricks. For example, we can combine an outside around the world and a crossover into a single trick. Actually, doing this gives us two new tricks. If we perform the crossover at the start of the trick, we call it Abbas around the world (aatw). If we perform the crossover at the end of the trick, we call it Touzani around the world (tatw). Here are both of these 1.5-rev tricks performed in succession:

Abbas-Touzani combo (aatw – tatw)

There are literally hundreds of possible tricks, all the way up to 3.5-revs. I won’t go into any more detail here, but hopefully you now have a bit of an idea of the mechanics of lower freestyle tricks.

Summary:

• All tricks are made up of some combination of revolutions and crossovers.

• You create combos by continuously chaining tricks together.

And here is the final, and most important, point:

• Creating aesthetically pleasing and technically challenging combinations of tricks is the main idea of lower-body freestyle.

This is where freestyle becomes creative and self-expressive. You can create combinations that no one has ever performed before. And you get to perform them with your own unique style. I think the self-expressive nature of freestyle is what really made me fall in love with it.

Style

What is style? I think it’s best be described as the unique, characteristic way in which a freestyler performs their tricks, and which tricks they choose to perform. Every freestyler has their own style.

What makes good style? It’s subjective, but I will offer my perspective. To me, a big part of good style is making the tricks look smooth and easy by using the minimal amount of movement required. A 3-revolution trick looks stylish when it looks like it required incredible skill as opposed to athletic ability. Here are some examples of great style (in my opinion):

Freestyle Legends

Here are some legends of freestyle football (and there are many more):

Soufiane Touzani (Netherlands), Rickard “Palle” Sjölander (Sweden), Paweł Skóra (Poland), Tom Follan (UK), Tobias Becs (Norway), Iago (Brazil), Brian Lockyer (South Africa), Ethan Altman (UK), MP (Russia), ARS (Russia), M3mo Vaz (Mexico), Yosuke Yokota (Japan), Anders “Azun” Solumn (Norway), Szymon Skalski (Poland), Michal “Michryc” Rycaj (Poland), Tokura (Japan), Roland “Rocco” Karászi (Hungary), Andrew Henderson (UK), Akim (Russia), Pavlov (Russia), Luca Chiarvesio (Italy), Timur Alekseev (Russia), Philip Warren Gertsson “PWG” (Sweden), PavlinoFF (Russia), Ricardinho Chahini (Brazil), Charly Iacono (Argentina), Jairo (Mexico).

I won’t go into any detail, but I encourage you to look them up if you are curious about freestyle. YouTube is the place!