No More Football Dancing
Rinat, China
Rinat is a Chinese freestyler and footballer from the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region in China, now living in Beijing.
Can you introduce yourself and tell us about your football journey?
My name is Rinat, and I am from Ürümqi in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region. I now live in Beijing. I started my football journey when I was in kindergarten, thanks to my uncle. He is only ten years older than me and we played a lot together when I was a child. My favourite player was Ronaldinho. Through his influence, I liked to try many different tricks and that is the reason I started doing freestyle football when I got older. I do not really play regular football, usually only with friends.
What did you try to show with the photos?
Some of the photos are of me and some friends training at a place next to the Bird Nest stadium where we usually go to practice. You can see me controlling the ball whilst doing a handstand. I practised it a lot before I was finally able to do it.
Another place featured is an old, abandoned park near my old apartment. That park is next to the first apartment I rented in Beijing after graduating from university. I used to go down there to draw, play football, or just buy some food and eat. It is a place where I can relax. People are always there playing music or skateboarding. I miss that park a lot since I moved out of my old apartment. I sometimes go back to that park to draw. Photos are a way to document my life and they are something spontaneous, like drawing.
What is your favourite photo?
We were barbecuing on the beach and drinking beer after we played football on the beach. Playing football on the beach is really difficult because it hurts your feet and I have so much more respect for beach football players now. I can still remember how the barbecue fish smelt and how much fun we had.
What role does football play in your community and in China?
Even though I have not been to South America, I feel like the people from my hometown in Xinjiang have a passion towards football that is no less than those from South America. However, there are sadly very few football fields in my hometown and I think that is also an issue all over China.
In addition, it can cost a lot of money to use a football field. For students, it is hard to pay for these fields, and especially for younger kids in elementary school. So instead, we could only play in the streets, but people would not let us play because it could disturb others. This caused a vicious cycle. We love this sport so much, football is very important to us, but nobody is there to help develop it at the grassroots level, which is a pity.
I would say football is not only important to Chinese people, but also important to people from different ethnicities and countries. Football should not have borders. That is the nature of sports, it can connect people together and help achieve more peace.
I think women have the same opportunities as men do, which means not many. The Chinese women’s football team just won the 2022 AFC Women's Asian Cup and it is very exciting for the Chinese people.
However, the environment for football overall is still the same. People who play basketball at school are always more popular than those who play football and there are more basketball courts than football fields. The basketball courts even charge less than the football pitches. This is the crucial and essential issue.
What does freestyle football mean to you?
Through freestyle football, I found confidence. When I was younger, I was insecure and self-conscious. In my senior year of high school, I performed freestyle football on stage for the first time. During this performance, it was the first time someone cheered for me and I felt very encouraged. This experience was the first time I ever felt like that. Freestyle football helped me walk out of the shadows of insecurity and self-consciousness.
Football gives meaning to my life, it is pure happiness. I hope that when I am 30, I can continue to improve my freestyle football skills. When I am 40, I hope I can still play like Zlatan Ibrahimovic physically with my friends. If I become a famous artist one day and I make enough money, I want to build more football fields in my hometown.
What is the future for football in China?
This is a very big question. What I can say is that if things continue as they are, football will not be able to develop. There should be more football facilities, less football dancing. It is important to make kids more interested in playing football and help make it as popular as basketball.
To explain what a football dance is, it is something that was created as an activity after school finished for the day. Football dancing became part of the plan to further develop Chinese football. There are some schools in China that created a series of exercises/dances that involve football, literally. The kids do dance exercises in their PE classes which involve a ball, and the dance has not much to do with football drills, they are just dance moves that look like some football moves.
Football fans in China think this is absolutely ridiculous because this kind of effort is completely useless. There should be more actual things done to solve the most pressing issues that keep kids away from playing football, and we should not waste our time and energy on things like football dancing, which is completely meaningless for developing footballers.
