Documente Academic
Documente Profesional
Documente Cultură
Robert Arnold
UWRT 1101
December 7, 2015
players at the professional level like Diego Maradona and Ronaldinho. They
were seen on television commercials and on the professional stage juggling a
ball and throwing in some tricks as they were doing so. The tricks they would
do were simply amazing and never seen before; it took the attention of
many.
Over the past decade or so, the sport has really started to pick up.
More tricks have been invented, more people are getting involved, more
people are eager to watch, and rules have been established. What are the
rules? There are none. There are no limitations to the sport other than how
far one will push themselves to be better. Tricks are being created that the
founders of freestyle would have never thought of and they are complex! The
difficulty of a trick can almost be assumed by just hearing the name and
some of the names are hard to believe where others are exactly what they
sound like. A trick called a headstall would make one believe that the
person performing the trick would stall the ball on their head and that would
be correct, but some tricks like the one called new shit leaves one
guessing. Most tricks are variations of the basic tricks. For example, an
around the world is where the ball is stalled on the foot of the freestyler
and then the foot is quickly swung around the ball making sure the ball does
not hit the ground and it is one of the most basic tricks to execute, but there
are many, many different forms of the trick. The around the world
variations could be a Lemmens around the world or could also be a
Touzani around the world. Both obviously being much harder to perform
than the original trick. Professionals tend to turn something basic into
something that looks almost impossible to do. It is almost like taunting the
original creator of the trick.
One thing about freestyle football had in common with all the other
forms of football, and other sports as well, is passion. It drives people to do
things that are unheard of and have never been seen. Passion is a motivator
and is very easily identifiable when watching freestyle footballers perform
and compete. The sport developed because of the passion of others for
freestyle, creating tricks and making freestyle football more competitive and
increasing the level of difficulty. Without the passion of footballers, freestyle
football would not be the sport it is today. There would be no Freestyle
Football Federation (F3) or world championships where the best of the best
compete for the title of the number one freestyler in the world.
With passion comes many hours devoted into the sport and a whole lot
of effort. No one is naturally talented enough to the point where practice is
not needed. The known all-stars in all sports, whether it be Peyton Manning
in the NFL or Travis Pastrana in every sport he attempts, put in tremendous
amounts of work and it definitely pays off. With freestyle football, practice
focuses on repetition and of course touches on the ball; the more touches
the better. When asking a freestyler how much time they put into practice,
they responded, I like to get in at least an hour of getting touches on the
ball a day. Touches on the ball improves control and composure when
attempting tricks, which is a must when participating in the sport. Although