yesmr. woo was inspired by maradona and began football freestyle as an actual thing of its own... not just juggling on the sidelines.
any circus shit or any other juggling or keepy uppy games that came before is irrelevant in terms of pinpointing when it began. it influenced freestyle but doesn't have anything to do with freestyle beyond that.
besides... do you really wanna talk about something thousands and thousands of years ago?
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ur gunna have to do the research urself but i can tell u a few little keypoints.
there have been ancient games similar to football which involved keeping a ball up in the air, such as cuju and kemari. there are also stone carvings depicting a knee stall, of an ancient greek version of football which involved a lot of trickery, called episkyros.
then blah blah blah, other versions of football... there's also a game called chinlone but that is a much smaller ball but has the same keepy uppy and tricking concepts as freestyle. plus, there's sepak takraw, which is a foot volleyball game with also a tiny ball if you want to include that in.
then there are circus jugglers. these existed also throughout history for thousands of years, but the earliest video evidences we have of juggling skills involving foot tricks include enrico rastelli, francis brunn, and etc. the feet have been involved in juggling routines from far earlier than that though.
then you also take a look at sports like footbag or hackysack which doesn't involve a ball but includes some similar tricks.
then you have a more direct connection you can find with footballers, and their juggling warm ups and training drills. you need not look further than the video evidences we have of pele, maradona, garrincha, di stefano, cruyff, and SO much more.
then maradona is the keypoint here because of the amazing control he had compared to other footballers that juggled. which in turn inspired mr. woo, who then turned it into a sport of its own in the 80s. shortly afterwards, many other old school first generation freestylers followed whether directly by mr. woo, or inspired by maradona himself, or inspired by some other sources independent of maradona or mr. woo.
but as far as i know, the term football freestyle wasn't invented even then. then you have the other old school freestylers that came afterwards, throughout the 90s, then in early 2000s you have a big breakthrough with nike commercials, nikeshowdown, and etc. the internet was a big launching pad for modern freestyle, then came popular vids like touzani's deel 1, and etc.
