The World Freestyle Football Association

Author: Jordi Mestre

  • The WFFA launches the new World Youth Freestyle Football Championship

    The WFFA launches the new World Youth Freestyle Football Championship

     

    The Freestyle Football community will celebrate the birth of a new competition this year: the best young freestylers on the planet will be offered a platform to showcase their talent in the World Youth Freestyle Football Championship, a global tournament aimed at male and female athletes under the age of 16.

    This competition, which will open its registration process on August 16th and kick off in September through the official WFFA App, will happen on a fully digital basis. Participants will be asked to upload their videos in a dedicated section of the App between September 15th and September 21st; the judges will then evaluate their routines and select the best 16 athletes of the male and female categories, who will then face each other in a knockout stage consisting of quarterfinals, semifinals and a third-place battle. Each of these heats will feature battles of 3 rounds, all through the official App.

    The World Youth Freestyle Football Championship will culminate in a Final that will be held online between November 1st and November 9th, 2021. The winners of this decisive showdown will receive a full-year sponsorship of the WFFA partner SWRL and, most importantly, the title of most promising male and female u16 freestylers: the very future of the sport of Freestyle Football! Besides this, a total prize money amount of 3,000€ will be split between the winners, the runners-up and the third-placed athletes of the tournament in both the male and the female categories.
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    Here is the full rundown of the tournament:

    • Registration period (From August 16 to September 15): All athletes wishing to participate will need to enter the official WFFA App (available for Android and iOS in the respective app stores) and register
    • Qualification round (From September 15 to September 21): All participants will need upload their routine as a horizontal, 30-second video to the dedicated space in the App
    • Top16 announcement (September 29): The selected participants for the knockout stage will be officially announced on the WFFA channels and notified in the App itself
    • Round of 16 (From September 30 to October 11): Competitors will need to upload their 30-second routines to the dedicated space in the official WFFA App, and their opponents will have 24 hours to respond to them
    • Quarterfinals (From October 12 to October 21): Same format as above
    • Semifinals (From October 22 to November 1): Same format as above
    • Third-place battle (From November 2 to November 9): Same format as above
    • Final (From November 2 to November 9): Same format as above
    • Winners announced (November 10): The WFFA channels will disclose the names of the male and female u16 World Champions!

    The World Youth Freestyle Football Championship will be judged using the official WFFA rules (available here) by a list of renowned, first-class freestylers led by World Champions Melody Donchet (France) and Charly Iacono (Argentina). The luxury lineup will also feature another World Champion, Ricardo Chahini (Brazil), as well as huge names of the sport of the likes of Laura Biondo (Venezuela), Paloma P. Mayo (Spain), Cata Vega Piña (Chile) and Javi Sanz (Spain).

    “We are very proud to present this tournament”, said Steve Elias, President of the WFFA. “We have heard the pleas of the community, particularly of the youngest athletes; they definitely deserve a platform to shine. We are convinced that this will help motivate them to improve their skills, and hence will eventually have a positive impact on the whole sport of Freestyle Football.”

    “The pandemic wreaked havoc on our competitive events, but also gave us new unexpected opportunities”, said Lukáš Škoda, Head of Operations of the WFFA. “The World Youth Freestyle Football Championship is an example: thanks to the technology we developed for Red Bull Street Style, we can now present this innovative format for all the young promises to show what they’re capable of.”

    “I believe the global Freestyle Football scene definitely needed a space for young athletes to prove how amazingly skilled they are”, said Dutch freestyle champion Jasmijn Janssen, female ambassador of the World Youth Freestyle Football Championship. “I’m thrilled to be supporting the growth of the sport through a great initiative like this!”.

    “As a teenager, I would’ve loved to participate in a competition like this one”, said Norwegian-Filipino freestyler Philip Warren Gertsson, male ambassador of the tournament. “I believe it offers a unique opportunity for the stars of the future to shine – and demonstrate how bright the future of freestyle is!”.

    “It’s a fantastic new challenge for us”, said Julio Cisneros, Head of Judging at the WFFA and leader of judges at the World Youth Freestyle Football Championship. “We are really looking forward to judging the skills of the next generation of freestylers. No doubt they will bring some never-seen-before tricks to the table and take us out of our comfort zone!”.

    More details about the tournament are available on the World Youth Freestyle Football Championship event page.

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    If you have an Android phone, click here to download the WFFA App from Google Play
    If you have an Apple phone, click here to download the WFFA App from the Apple Store

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

  • The WFFA launches a brand-new website

    The WFFA launches a brand-new website

    The World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA) has reached today a key milestone in the process of digitalisation of its assets – and the sport of Freestyle Football itself: the launch of a brand-new website, built in partnership with the sports technology brand GameDay. The new digital platform has been created to act as a hub for all the activities around Freestyle Football, from live event registration and ticketing to online membership of the Association. The global community of freestyle professionals, amateurs and fans will be able to find a wide range of resources and information in an easier and faster manner than in the previous online home of the WFFA.

    The new WFFA website will include a calendar with a comprehensive guide to all the competitions organised by the Association (notably, but not limited to, the Super Ball, Red Bull Street Style and the Youth World Championship), as well as rulings, rankings, news and training programs. The site will also offer a library of assets and resources for media, as well as a dedicated space for the WFFA partners – including the likes of Red Bull, Soccerex, SWRL, 4Freestyle, AYNIAB, GameDay and the most recent addition, German football powerhouse Borussia Dortmund.

    “We are tremendously proud to present the new WFFA website to the freestyle community worldwide”, said Steve Elias, President of the WFFA. “Our aim has always been to help freestylers of any level and fans of the sport to connect with us and among themselves to strengthen the community: we are certain that our new digital home will be a huge step forward in this direction.”

    “We believe this is great news, both for the WFFA and for the sport of Freestyle Football as a whole”, said Dan Wood, Head of Partnerships at the WFFA. “This is a cornerstone of the growth plan that we’ve designed for the Association and the sport, that will see a myriad of benefits not just for the community of freestylers but also for the fans of the sport and for our partners around the world. Fasten your seatbelts, though – there is still much more to come in the coming months!”.

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

  • Borussia Dortmund and the WFFA kick off the BVB Global Freestyle Challenge

    Borussia Dortmund and the WFFA kick off the BVB Global Freestyle Challenge

    The World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA) and German football powerhouse Borussia Dortmund (BVB) have announced the launch of the inaugural BVB Global Freestyle Challenge. Powered by Evonik, this collaboration aims at bridging the football and freestyle worlds, and further raising awareness of the Freestyle Football art form. Calling out BVB fans from all over the world to showcase their creative football skills, three winners will be selected by the public and jury votes to receive special prizes, including merchandise gift boxes worth €600 each.

    A think tank team consisting of WFFA’s freestyle experts from around the world have been chosen as the BVB 09 Freestyle Ambassadors. The 09 ambassadors are Alex Mendoza (USA), Torin Lynch (USA), Jannik Singpiel (Germany), Cheny (China), Taehee Kim (South Korea), Valerie Su (Singapore), Phat Nguyen (Vietnam), Zeem Ahmad (Malaysia) and the Freestyle World Champion Erlend Fagerli (Norway).

     “I am delighted to establish this relationship with the WFFA, which comes at a particularly exciting time as we focus much more these days on content creation and digitalization,” said Benedikt Scholz, BVB Head of International & New Business.

    Suresh Letchmanan, BVB Managing Director for Asia Pacific, highlighted further: “We are very happy to welcome the WFFA into our BVB family to help us find the best creative and talented BVB freestyler out there, who enjoys showcasing his or her skills as we work towards bringing special experiences to our fans around the world”. 

    Dan Wood, Co-Founder & Head of Partnerships at the WFFA, said: “It’s thrilling to launch this great partnership with a legendary club such as Borussia Dortmund. We are certain that this will offer a great opportunity to showcase the amazing skills of the BVB fan community, as well as educating wider audiences about our fantastic, COVID-proof sport”.

    Erlend Fagerli, 5-time World Freestyle Champion and one of the nine BVB Freestyle ambassadors, added: “I’m really excited to have teamed up with my freestyle friends around the world and to be working with such a forward-thinking club as BVB. This is the beginning of many great projects that will help us educate the football world about Freestyle”.

    The contest will kick off on June 1, 2021.  For more information, please visit www.bvb.de/eng/freestylechallenge.

    About Borussia Dortmund

    Borussia Dortmund is one of the most successful football clubs in Germany.  The club have won eight league championships, five DFB-Pokals, one UEFA Champions League, one Intercontinental Cup, and one UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. With over 159,000 members in total, it is one of the five largest sports clubs in Germany and is the seventh-largest worldwide.

    For more information about Borussia Dortmund (BVB), please visit:

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

  • Super Ball is back in 2021 with a special anniversary edition

    Super Ball is back in 2021 with a special anniversary edition

    The Freestyle Football community will gather once again this August in Prague, the capital of the Czech Republic, to celebrate the sport and crown the most skillful athletes in all of its disciplines. After a difficult year due to Covid-19, hundreds of freestylers from over 20 nations will meet at the Clarion Congress hotel in Prague to participate in the greatest freestyle open tournament of the season: the Super Ball.

    This year’s edition of the competition, which will start on August 17th and end up with the Grand Finals of its 7 categories on August 21st, will be a very special one: Super Ball 2021 will not just allow the community to meet again after the pandemic, but also celebrate the 10th anniversary of the tournament – a great feat in the history of Freestyle Football.

    The 2021 Super Ball, just as its predecessors, will be an open event: athletes from all nationalities and categories will be able to participate. Registrations will open on June 1st 2021, and in order to sign up, freestylers and fans from around the globe will find all key information, including registration and live stream, at www.superball.world.

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    This year’s edition of the tournament will include 7 disciplines: 

    • Freestyle Battles: the main competition of the event, a clash of individual quality and mental strength in which two athletes compete by showing their best skills to the team of 5 judges
    • Freestyle routine: a showcase of individual mastery in which an athlete demonstrates his or her quality in sync with music
    • Double routine: a spectacle of synchrony in which two athletes show their most amazing combined moves
    • Sick Three: a competition to find the very best combination of 3 consecutive tricks
    • Challenge: a distinctive category in which athletes perform predetermined tricks at their highest speed; specially designed for lovers of fast combinations
    • Show Flow: a competition for complete freestylers to demonstrate their absolute control over all aspects of the sport
    • Iron Man: a marathon in basic lower body combinations – only for the toughest athletes!

    “It’s always an enormous honour to organise the Super Ball, but we are especially proud to present this year’s event”, said Lukas Skoda, the Chief Tournament Director. “It’s been a difficult year for the whole world, and hence it’s even more special to be able to commemorate Super Ball’s 10th anniversary with all the Freestyle Football community in Prague”.

    “At the WFFA we are absolutely thrilled to support the Super Ball yet another year”, said Steve Elias, President of the World Freestyle Football Association. “The Super Ball is one of the backbone tournaments of our global circuit, a unique opportunity for the community to celebrate the sport; it’s fantastic to do so again after the sad times of Covid-19. I have no doubt that this year’s edition will be an absolute blast!”.

    “Super Ball 2020 was a special edition for me, because besides the competition we enjoyed great support from the community in a difficult moment”, said Agnieszka Mnich, the current female Super Ball champion. “This year I’m training hard to push my level with fresh new moves: I can’t wait to be on the stage again!”.

    “It was amazing to win last year: it gave me a huge boost to keep pushing”, said Jesse Marlet, the defending male Super Ball champion. “I’ve been preparing myself as hard as possible to try to retain the title in 2021!”.

    The 2021 Super Ball will be organised by the WFFA in partnership with local company PJ Art Production, an alliance that has guaranteed high-quality standards and success for the last 8 years in a row. Following the tradition of recent years, the 2021 event will be hosted by renowned Italian speaker Lorenzo Pinciroli, an unmistakable face for the Freestyle Football community.

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    xx Want to learn more? Click here to check out all the information about this competition in the Events section of the WFFA website

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

  • The WFFA kicks off a game-changing partnership with GameDay

    The WFFA kicks off a game-changing partnership with GameDay

    The World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA), the global governing body for the sport of Freestyle Football, has announced an exciting new partnership with GameDay, the leading provider of digital solutions to international, national, grassroots and professional sporting organisations across the United Kingdom, Europe, Australia and New Zealand.

    The WFFA will rollout GameDay’s next-generation membership and events platform to support the mission of developing and nurturing the global structure for Freestyle Football. GameDay will provide their Membership and Events platform, which will assist in participant nominations for the WFFA-sanctioned events. 

    The WFFA have today launched event entries (nominations) and spectator tickets for one of these events: the Super Ball, which will take place in Prague, Czech Republic between August 15 and August 21. You can book your spot here!

    Dan Wood, Co-Founder and Head of Partnerships for the WFFA, said: “We are convinced that this partnership with GameDay will become a key milestone in the growth of Freestyle Football: it will allow us to create so much more value and opportunity, not only for our beloved sporting community around the world, but also for fans and future partners. With such a quality tech partner on board, we are really on track to transform our sport in the years ahead.”

    Andy Graham, General Manager for GameDay, said: “We are very excited to partner with World Freestyle Football Association, showcasing how our products and solutions can cater to all types of sports. This new and exciting partnership with the WFFA extends the work we already do with emerging and lifestyle sports including GB Snowsports, Parkour UK, and Surfing New Zealand to name a few.” 

    About GameDay

    GameDay have been providing next-generation sports technology solutions in the Australian market since 2001 and have extended the key markets they work in across the United Kingdom, Europe and New Zealand. Other GameDay partners in the European region include the International Bowling Federation, Rugby Football League, Basketball England, Run For All, Basketball Ireland, Cricket Ireland, GB Snowsports, the UEFA Foundation and Aston Villa FC Foundation.

    GameDay provides Membership, Competition, and Event Management platforms, and various digital website, e-commerce and auction fundraising solutions to the sports community.

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

  • Freestyle Football teams up with the Global Esports Federation

    Freestyle Football teams up with the Global Esports Federation

    The World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA) has teamed up with the Global Esports Federation (GEF) as an affiliate member of their global alliance. This move signifies not only the recognition by the WFFA of the growth and excitement of Freestyle and Street Football in the gaming world, but also the opportunity collectively to make a difference by promoting healthy, active lifestyles across the sector too.

    The WFFA echoes the GEF’s commitment in developing new platforms to evolve a real sport experience in this digital age. The undeniable power of sport elevated with technology can bring youth to sport and sport to youth.

    Dan Wood, Head of Global Partnerships at the WFFA, said: “The mission of the GEF is directly in line with that of ours. We want to inspire young people across the globe to embrace the gaming world, but to do so with a growth mindset and a conscious effort to get active.”

    Freestyle Football has been a hugely popular sport both in virtual and reality terms in the past decade. EA Sports’ FIFA Street series was a great success, which was followed by Volta in FIFA20 and the forthcoming FIFA21. On August 25th 2020, the brand new arcade game Street Power Football (www.streetpowergame.com) was launched to further propel the sport into the mainstream in a very exciting way.

    About The Global Esports Federation

    The Global Esports Federation (GEF) promotes the credibility, legitimacy and prestige of esports. It convenes athletes, players and the world’s publishers, developers, industry partners and sporting organizations on one inclusive platform.

    The GEF encourages and supports competition along with developing community and the connection between esports, virtual and traditional sports. The GEF counts on the support of a series of first-class brands and organisations, from around the world, including Chinese giant Tencent as founding global partner, gaming technology company Refract as global partner, and strategic partners of the likes of the Commonwealth Games Federation, the Olympic Council of Asia, the Organización Deportiva Suramericana (ODESUR) and the Global Sports Innovation Center Powered by Microsoft (GSIC).

    For more information about the GEF, please visit www.globalesports.org.

    Stay tuned to the official channels of the WFFA to follow the latest updates!

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