I had prepared this for L2F article, which didn't get posted, so I thought I'd put it up here. Comments welcome.
With the advent of the F3 World Tour and the increasing worldwide notoriety of freestyle football (ff), questions like, “What is quality freestyle (fs)?” or even “What is freestyle football?” loom large. In my discussions with non-fsers, I find these questions difficult to answer, and I don’t think I’m alone. Those within the fs community seem to have an intuitive understanding of quality, but the introduction of specifics tends to lead to heated arguments. This is natural, as our sport, like skateboarding, figure skating, snowboarding, diving, and many others, has the challenge of turning a subjective judgment into and objective one.
A common starting point is the suggestion that fs can be broken down into two aspects, expressed by the F3 as sport and art and furthermore, that a quality fser “has the ability to perform both the art and sport of freestyle football on a consistently world class level.” However, the distinction seems to break down in the judging criterion, for the battle (sport) and routines (art), with vague and overlapping terms like, flow, style, originality, creativity, and difficulty. The Superball event in Prague, F3’s World Open, shares a similar sentiment in describing “the two definitions of Football Freestyle”, but suffers from the same indistinct criterion. In the Battle portion of the competition, judges affect a fser’s progress through a determination of “skill and level overall” and “overall performance.” The Sick Three is decided by assessing difficultly, cleanness, and style, and the Routines by evaluation of flow, creativity and style, all terms that are not easily defined. In all likelihood, actual judging is more precise, but if that is the case, competitors are being subjected to a disservice.
As I mentioned earlier, the popularity and influence of ff is continuing to grow, of which the F3 is a perfect example As this trend continues, and organizers begin to dictate what quality fs is, they will influence the direction of the sport overall. With this in mind, the imprecision of the criterion of the F3 and Superball make me uneasy. In addition, I don’t intend to say that organizers have complete control over fsers. Fs is and always will be driven by the individual. The job of organizers should be to foster the growth of the sport and individuals through the standards they impose.
The vagueness exhibited by F3 characterizes this forum and others like it through fsers that engage in argument using unclear terms. People get offended and fs suffers. It is apparent from these exchanges that many people care a great deal about fs and would be aided by some clarity. For the remainder of this article, I intent not to set up a system of judgment, but attempt to address the vagueness inherent in terms related to ff.
A consequence of the art/sport dichotomy are the hardcore and creative freestyle camps, which are often set in opposition. Throughout, I will assume that these two fashions can be interpreted as an attitudes or trick sets. The goal of hardcore, which tends to be easier to define, is to progress physically with almost obsessive repetition and practice. Aside from the mental challenges associated with these goals, the focus is on physical, athletic progression. This is represented in the trick set, which concentrates on lowers and encompasses the “obvious”, and difficult derivatives of the co, atw, and htw.
I find that a useful analogy for understanding the relationship between the two fashions is skateboarding, specifically its vert and street forms. Both involve flipping, spinning, and grabbing the board; the same basic techniques out of which routines are constructed. The two are separated by a two-story ramp, required for vert skateboarding, which facilitates more hang time, speed and faster spinning. Vert skateboarding shares the need for faster spinning, bigger tricks and more speed with hardcore freestyle.
Street skateboarding sees a much greater variety of tricks and approaches with more emphasis on individual stylishness. Creative freestyle bears similarities in that there is a greater variety of tricks, and more emphasis on technical ability. The difficulty in defining the creative style is that it tends to be a catch all for all things not hardcore. Lowers also receive the most emphasis and the styles of sitdowns, ground, uppers, etc. fit here more appropriately. Associated tricks tend to include block, flow and rake combos, though all moves/combos with variety, unexpectedness, artistic style, and imagination, tend to be associated with the creative fashion.
I have tried to show that the division in fs is much like that in skateboarding and I think we would do well to follow the lead of the extreme sports organizations like the X Games in trying to develop our sport. However, we differ in one crucial aspect: equipment. Street and vert skateboarding are naturally separated by the vert ramp, whereas in our sport a ball is the only equipment requirement, and nothing else (barring excessive use of the hands) is off limits. Therefore, hardcore and creative style will continue to butt heads and it is import to identify traits that are shared between both fashions.
I think it’s common for fsers to perceive the hardcore and creative styles to be at opposite ends of a spectrum, with the assumption that you must give up some of one to get some of the other, with most fsers somewhere in the middle. I think this is a mistake. Hardcore and creative attitudes/tricks should be on different spectra on which the style of individual fsers can be analyzed. For instance, if we treat the styles as trick sets, and hardcore as the natural derivatives of atw, htw, co, etc., a “block and flow” fser might be low on the hardcore and high on the creative spectra. What about a 4-rev trick? It seems obvious that his is hardcore trick. I would argue that a creative attitude is also required. Developing a technique to land such a trick requires the analysis of one’s movements and failures while finding creative solutions to technique and training issues. I maintain that all fsers require some of both of these characteristics and it also goes without saying that in a particular video or live performance, a fsr’s position on each of these spectra can change quickly.
Both of these fashions share other traits as well. All fsers are drawn from field football by the appeal of expressing themselves, and to express what they love about fs, be it creative, hardcore, or anything else. Precision is also important to both camps, suggesting that it is not only that something is performed, but also how it is performed. In addition I think it can be said that it is a trait seen in many of the best fsers. I identify with Ethan Altmann’s description to a sampling of Rocco’s style:
i have showed his freestyle videos to several family members and i always get the same response...they all say that it looks like he's dancing with the ball. that is what constitutes a perfect style imo, when it has so much flow and effortlessness that it could be dance.
I hope that this writing will help the fs community in the direction of progress in regard to the question of quality, as I care deeply about the future of the sport.
