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 |
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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!
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