Freestyle Football is Trendy Nowadays, But How and Where It Evolved?
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In this day and age, we often see freestylers perform ridiculous and
yet amazing tricks and moves not only on TV advertisement but on the
internet as well. Whenever I play footy with my fellow friends, they
enjoy doing fancy footwork regularly which sometimes makes me envy and
sometimes amazes me as well. At the time, I wondered how and where it
all began.
I took the initiative to ask a couple of my friends and browse through
forums. Most of them thought freestyle football came from Brazil
because a lot of amazing skillful kids and players out there who can
do bizarre tricks that are not even in the book. But some say it came
from Holland probably because of Edgar Davids’ background and how he
used to play at the backyards with his friends.
Where it began remains unknown and mysterious among us football
fanatics. Prior to the late 90s, players like Pele, Johan Cruyff, De
Stefano and others all juggled a ball for practice to improve their
control techniques (touches, balance, coordination).
After that, freestyle football really took off in the early 80s when
Diego Maradona displayed his mastery in control (juggle a ball, an
orange, a golf ball, a tennis ball etc) and performed in half-time
shows during Argentine Clausura matches. In fact, one of his famous
skills of all time was the Maradona 7 where a player juggle the ball
with the right foot, then the left foot, followed by the right thigh,
then the left thigh, subsequently the right shoulder, then the left
shoulder and finally the head.
While Maradona became successful and popular, others tried to follow
but failed. His brilliance inspired Hao Young Woo, a South Korean who
worked extremely hard to develop his juggling skills and eventually
earned a reputation as a football entertainer and inspired new
generation such as Abbas Farid as well.
As the years gone by, most freestyle players were Mr. Woo inspired,
preferring to juggle and control the ball using all parts of the body
only. Until the early 21st century, Touzani and Nelson were among the
new generation of freestylers preferring fancier tricks with different
combination and variations of around-the-worlds and other lower body
tricks. Both Touzani and Nelson and other freestylers compete in
Amsterdam for the MOTG (Masters of the Game) competition in 2003.
Back in the days of Pele, Maradona and Cruyff, the word “freestyle”
was unknown and no one has ever heard that word before in the world of
soccer at least until the late 90s. Then, in the late 21st century,
Nike came in as they launched an advertising campaign promoting the
players and the competition. One of campaigns is to allow participants
to submit their own video clip and receive feedback worldwide at NikeFootball. Thus,
opens the door for the likes of Touzani and Abbas Farid to display
their skills worldwide and become more popular.
In addition, other service companies such as You Tube, Google Video,
Yahoo Video, Metacafe, Grouper, iFilm and others provide similar
websites that allows you to upload your own videos including your own
football clips. So that other would-be freestylers are able to submit
their own video as well.
Although recent changes made throughout the decade especially the
internet have raise it’s popularity, people are yet to know the
origins of freestyle football and will continue to speculate it.
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