World Freestyle Day II
To mark World Freestyle Day (1st September 2020), Goal Click teamed up with the World Freestyle Football Association for a new special series. From Chile and Brazil to Vietnam and Finland, we asked 10 elite Freestylers across the world to tell their personal stories using their own words and a single photo. This is Part 2. Read on for their stories…
Freestyle Fellows, Delhi, India
We are The Freestyle Fellows, a professional Freestyle Football crew based in Delhi, India. In our crew we have four members; @Devfreestyler (Leader), @Hunjanfreestyle, @Vikramfreestyler and @Simfreestyle.
Our journey started on 18th November 2018. Our main focus is to promote Freestyle Football in India as much as we can, because in India there are lots of people who are completely unaware of the sport. We have travelled to many places to promote Freestyle Football and its culture. At first, we didn’t have too much support from the public but now they understand us and support us too :)
This photo features Dev, Garry and Simar. It was taken at our practice area after cooling down and it demonstrates how grateful we are for having this beautiful art form in our life. We believe that we are family and we often spend time remembering all the best moments that we have shared together with a ball.
In India over the past few years, the opportunities for female footballers are growing. For example, after the ISL (Indian Super League) started in 2015 many more professional clubs started a women’s team also. However, it is still not popular for girls in general. Lots of work is needed to encourage more participation amongst girls. There is a need for more female football coaches to come through, because this will inspire more girls to play the game. Traditional values in Indian culture mean that female participation in sports is still difficult to embrace in some places. But it is rapidly changing.
Follow Freestyle Fellows @freestylefellows
Emmi Bjorn, Helsinki, Finland
My name is Emmi Björn. I'm a 22-year-old football freestyler and circus performer. When I was 8-9 years old, I watched a movie called Bend it like Beckham and that's when I fell in love with football. I'm from a small town and there weren't too many possibilities when it comes to hobbies, so in the beginning I was just practicing alone at home in our backyard. At the age of 11 I heard from my classmate that there was a team for girls, but all the players were older than us both. I still joined and soon we had enough girls at the same age to have our own team.
I always enjoyed juggling the ball. Soon I found myself watching videos from The Skilltwins (a popular YouTube channel) and many more football YouTubers. The turning point was when I accidentally found a video of the Red Bull Street Style female world final in 2016. I was amazed and thought that it was the coolest thing I've ever seen.
In the Autumn of 2017, I moved to Helsinki to study and joined a football team. I felt a little bit freer after moving there and decided to go outside near my apartment to practice some tricks with my ball. One day a man walked past and said “do you know what Freestyle Football is? I think you're good and should focus on that”. That is when I started to figure things out. I found a community of Freestylers in Helsinki and went to their weekly training meeting. It was amazing to see some other freestylers in the Freestyle Finland community and seeing them practicing LIVE was life changing. I went home and started to cry. That unconfident small-town girl who had been trying to figure out her place in the world finally found the missing piece! I called my mom and said, "Mom I finally found my thing and I want to make my living one day with this.” And that's when I quit all my other hobbies to have more time to focus on freestyle.
After less than 2 years of freestyle my life has dramatically changed. In 2019 I became a central part of Cirque du Soleil's show Luzia. It was a dream come true. There I figured out 'my place' as a freestyler. I feel so lucky and grateful for that opportunity and hope to be back competing in the professional events one day.
Even though freestyle football is a small sport/art, it's great to see more and more younger people stepping into the game and showing their skills here in Finland. I want to encourage young girls especially. So often I feel like they doubt themselves even though they are talented and capable to achieve so much more than they think. For many of them football is still the main thing. I would like to see freestyle football no longer related to regular football and celebrated as its own separate sport.
I hope my story as a freestyler inspires people to do what they love. My journey as a freestyler has been full of ups and downs but I would not change a thing. It's been the best thing that has ever happened to me. My goal is to support people to do things they love and are passionate about - and not to care about others’ opinions.
Follow Emmi @emmibjorn
Juan Roberto Aguiló, Matanzas, Chile
My name is Juanro. I'm a 35-year-old football freestyler from Chile. I have juggled the ball since I was 7 years old, especially sitting down since I didn't have good balance back then. Growing up in the era of Nintendo helped me develop my feet in a big way. Since I was born without arms, I started using my feet to play videogames and over the years I achieved great motor skills, which led to natural skills to juggle the ball back in my early years. It's funny how something sedentary made a big difference in my active life, getting me into juggling.
It was not until I turned 16 that I started doing many tricks with the ball after watching Ronaldinho in a TV advert. For me, the ability to create new tricks and explore new boundaries is what makes freestyle fun; this has been the key to never having quit this amazing sport for so many years. I feel lucky that I discovered this world, because it has a united community with a lot of support between athletes. I still look up today to the ‘old school’ legends that motivated me to get better, and today I feel a great responsibility to pass on my experience to new generations, who are doing crazy tricks! I actually think that I learn more from them!
The photos were taken in Matanzas, Chile, a popular windsurf location in South America. I tried to capture how little we are on the earth, yet how meaningful a ball can be to us in this universe. I also wanted to show that freestyle football is complete freedom, having the power to create big things from nothing. Freestyle football is a big source of inspiration where I live, encouraging young people to overcome the greatest of pushbacks in life if we are willing to work hard and believe in ourselves.
Follow Juan Roberto @juanroaguilo
Javi Sanz Aguilar, Madrid, Spain
My name is Javi and I've been training in freestyle football for over 13 years. I was raised in a neighbourhood in Madrid where I used to spend hours and hours playing on the streets. It was back in 2007 when a friend of mine showed me a video of Ronaldinho doing tricks for a Nike campaign and that was the point when we started to try them on the streets. Then we got access to the internet where we discovered new freestyle videos that we were amazed by. Then this sport became more and more part of my lifestyle, meeting new friends, traveling to other countries to have meetings and competitions, which still continue to this day.
In the photo I'm with one of the first freestylers that I met from my city (the guy juggling the ball) and a new generation of freestyler that started to practice a couple of years ago. The location is the Royal Palace of Madrid; a very touristic place in my city where we often train during the weekends. This photo was taken at the beginning of our training session on the 1st of September (World Freestyle Day 2020) and usually the place is full of tourists gathering around us while we are training, but because of the pandemic these days it is empty, as you can see.
The last 10 years, when Freestyle Football has grown rapidly around the world, has also been the golden decade in Spanish football, which started with the Spanish Men’s National Team winning the FIFA World Cup 2010 in South Africa and has been followed by the country hosting the careers of two of the best football players in history, Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo. All of this has been a big motivation for young kids starting to play football in my country. And of course, there is a great impact on Freestyle Football because in my opinion, many children discover our sport through football.
The small community that we have in Spain makes Freestylers very close. This means that when someone wants to start practicing, they get a lot of support from everyone in the community.
Follow Javi @javifreestyler
