Sony Playstation have launched a new competition for Freestylers aged between 13 and 16. The winners of each age category will battle out at the finals in Rome and the overall winner will get to be the official ball carrier at the Champions League Final in Rome on 27th May 09 - along with a whole host of other prizes.
Here's part of the official press release:
This new and exciting initiative has been set up to inspire the next generation of youngsters to showcase their football freestyle skills on a global platform. PlayStation, a UEFA Champions League sponsor, will host an online competition on YouTube to find the best young freestylers in Great Britain. The national winners will qualify for a live European Final, taking place in Italy, where the overall winner will be whisked off to Rome's Stadio Olimpico to become the official ball carrier at this year’s Champions League Final (27 May, 2009).
This project supports the popular format of the game, which challenges individuals to push their football skills and technique to the limit, by performing a series of tricks whilst keeping a ball airborne. For the national heats young hopefuls are invited to enter by sending a video clip of their freestyle skills to the website
www.youtube.com/psfreestylers. PlayStation is inviting male and female freestylers to enter between the age of 13 and 16. The competition is now open with 10 May 2009 set as the closing date for entries.
The UK conquerors will face the champions of an Italian national competition as both sets of competitors go head-to-head in a live European Freestylers Final. This will be hosted at the ‘Fans Park’ in Rome on the day of the UEFA Champions League Final. All the finalists will be rewarded with an all expenses paid trip to watch football’s most prestigious Final in Europe.
The winning entries to PlayStation Freestylers will be decided by an expert judging panel, which includes Dan Magness - one of the world’s top professional football freestylers. Magness from Milton Keynes performs his phenomenal football tricks at events across the globe and currently holds three Guinness World Records for freestyle football. Magness will be joined on the judging panel by former Tottenham Hotspur and Liverpool defender John Scales, who is the brainchild behind this grassroots project.
PlayStation Freestylers is set to release a series of freestyle video clips which will be made available on the YouTube site featuring the best footage from the entries of this all-new competition. For more information about PlayStation Freestylers and an outline of the competition rules, please visit
www.youtube.com/psfreestylers.
