An Overview of The F3 Ranking System

The recent release of the 2016 F3 world ranking list for the top 100 places for football freestylers has caused a considerable amount of attention, discussion and criticism.

Having read through the plethora of comments on Facebook and various other outlets of social media, hearing many freestylers’ views on the list and it’s implications/direction, I will attempt to use this article as a means of explaining and digesting the list blended with my own personal view on it.

You can view the official list HERE as well.

How does the ranking list work?

So starting from square one: points are earned based on a freestylers extent of success in various F3 official competitions. This mainly comprises of national, continental and world open championships.

This list is made up of 2016 F3 competitions only and is not an accumulation across all the years since F3 started.

The better you do in each respective competition, the more points you earn. The more points you have, the higher up you are on the ranking list. Simple yes?

What is the purpose of the list? What does it show?

This is the biggest question so I’ll get this one out the way early.

The answer is I don’t have a clue and I question it’s purpose.

For me, all that is conclusive is that it’s an indicator of who had a great calendar year in regards to F3 official competitions.

I honestly don’t feel like our sport needs a ranking system to suggest who is better than who. Certainly not at the minute anyway. Maybe in the future when the numbers and attention and popularity of the sport explodes even more could you argue it be more appropriate.

One thing that it definitely does not show is a clear cut scaler system of freestylers abilities in comparison to one another, for example freestyler no. 36 is way better than freestyler no. 52.

By the very nature of the sport, that would be interpreting the list far too literally and as we all know, its whatever you bring on the day of the competition. Anything can happen. We’ve seen upsets countless times not to mention its based on subjective judging.

Perhaps some freestylers love the idea of having a ranking system as its another means of a ‘title’ they can claim. But in truth, your position on a ranking system is not fixed, it can rise and fall. The titles/trophies that an individual wins from a competition is forever. On that day… they won. Are we trying to aim for like a ranking system that is used in tennis here or what?

If someone near the top of the list doesn’t win a competition then does the person they lose to overtake them? No of course not, but you can see how it’s all situational outside of the list itself.

So what are the main problems with the list?

Firstly, not all competitions are ‘official’ and therefore you can’t earn points from everything you compete in. There are some world class individuals who don’t compete in everything, and this can be for a whole host of reasons:

• The cost of travel
• Injury
• No real prize money
• Other commitments
• They can’t be assed and would rather stay at home and play FIFA and binge watch that new series on Netflix

And from this you could say that the list isn’t a complete reflection on how well people did throughout the year in freestyle competitions. Nor is it a complete list of everyone that competes. Nor is it a complete list of every freestyler in existence.

A notable example in my opinion being the Scandinavian championships. The level is so high here that with all due respect they are making some nations look like a bunch of Willy Bingroves in comparison. No points earned from this competition however.

Then again, if there were points involved for every competition, you would see how some people have more opportunities than others to compete and earn points.

What about the F3 World Tour?

In my opinion the F3 World Tour is a very prestigious competition that I would expect the best of the best to be occupying those 16 places. We won’t get drawn into the ‘Selection of Wildcards’ discussion otherwise we would be here forever.

To part select the freestylers to take part based off of this point system I don’t agree with entirely. I say this not because I feel those selected do not deserve it, I just feel there are often others who possibly, dare I say are more deserving that are overlooked.

But I totally get where they are coming from in terms of the ‘growing of our sport’ angle, it makes perfect logical sense to have a wide mix of people, nationalities and styles in this competition to boost it’s profile. Heck, if I got asked to compete I’d go wait in the waiting area of the airport terminal now but sadly I’m probably rotting down in like position number 272 on that list or something 😂 I hope those on the tour have the absolute time of their lives and smash it.

So how easy is it to win an F3 competition?

Well, how long is a piece of string?

The biggest argument being made here by freestylers is a lack of fairness in a system that doesn’t acknowledge the huge chasm of difference in levels across different countries.

There will be some countries that have individuals who win their national championships year after year, but looking at the levels (and also the numbers) of the competitors its clear to see that each country is different. And therefore there is a huge problem with tarnishing them all with the same brush with this point system.

It’s wrong to suggest that winning a national competition in Turkey for example, is of equal difficulty to winning a national championships in Mexico, and therefore both those title claimers should earn 125 points regardless.

Therefore at continental and world open, it’s understandable to have more points up for grabs for the victor.

So what about the points breakdown? Even if the countries are different surely the weighting of the larger scale tournaments are fair right?

Again I have to disagree.

Winning a national: 125

Winning a continental: 250

Winning a world open: 500

The difference between these is waaaaay too big in my opinion. I don’t think winning a world open should equate to winning 4 national championships. It’s almost so many points that it becomes unreachable and the top dogs stay at the top of this list for a long long time. They can even afford to not compete in several competitions because of how many points they have to their name already.

I’m unsure on the exact weighting of the various stages of each competition, other than you get 1 point for turning up and competing and getting eliminated first round I believe. (Wonder how many kids will change their instagram bios once they learn this).

You’re coming across awfully critical, what’s your point?

By no means do I want this to sound as though I’m ungrateful or disrespectful towards the work that goes into the list both as a concept and as foundation of our sport. But I don’t want it to be a foundation of our sport. My end goal with freestyle is certainly not to wrack up points on a list. I just want to do my best in competitions.

So what do we do about it?

It would be unfair to critique something without even an ounce of suggestion for how it could be improved.

Don’t abandon the list necessarily. Make changes. Constructive changes.

If we truly are fixated on a system that is to include everyone and everything, decide on the bare minimum first such as how many freestylers does a country need in order to host a national AND OFFICIAL championships. Some people are missing out and to them, maybe this list is a big deal.

Categorising Countries

Second is the weighting of countries based on level. Someone suggested this as a means of ranking countries and therefore their respective national championships all become relative in points, heck this could even stretch as far as continental too. (That might be too ambitious but again, a notable example would be to compare Oceana to Europe or something in terms of numbers and level.)

So if for example we had bracket A, bracket B and bracket C. With bracket A being the most elite, and C being the lowest ranked, there is now a different amount of points to be earned. Sounds fairer yes?

Well here’s the tricky bit, how would we decide what countries go into what bracket? If Andrew Henderson is winning the UK champs year after year does this mean UK is an amazing country for freestylers and therefore should be in the top tier of category A?

How do you decide how many countries go into each bracket either?

All of these aspects are things we would love because in theory would make things fairer by definition of relativity. However it would be easier said than done to try apply this. But that doesn’t mean it’s not worth trying!

Points

In my opinion, seeing as we are starting from scratch each calendar year, there’s no time like the present to change the SCALE of the points. I think a more appropriate scale would be:

Winning a national: 100

Winning a continental: 200

Winning a world open: 300

This all assuming we still only kept it to F3’s current official competitions.

F3 world tour participants

Select these using a brand new method. I don’t have any suggestions as to what but anyone who is the current holder and wins a world open should be a given. Decide on the rest using some other qualification method.

If the F3 World Tour does not have a points system to be earned from competing in it, then other competitions that also do not reward points could also be taken into consideration for the selection and qualification of the F3 World Tour no?

Overall to conclude it was never going to be easy to devise a perfect system like this but that doesn’t necessarily mean you shouldn’t start somewhere and have a go at it. Rather inconclusively I have voiced some of my thoughts and ideas of others as to what the future direction should be for the list but at the end of the day (and not because I’m not in the top 100) it really doesn’t hold much value at all to me and isn’t worth worrying about.

Thanks for reading, would love to hear more of anyone else’s thoughts on it.

You can follow me on twitter and instagram @stevegrayfs 😊✌️