What is freestyle football? A professional explains…
Jamie Knight, top UK freestyle footballer, explains the sport and how reading has helped his career.
Jamie Knight is ranked the 2nd best freestyle footballer in the UK and 16th in the world. His video demonstrations of amazing football tricks form a key part of our Skills Academy programme. Here, he discusses the sport, his life as a freestyler and how reading has helped his career.
So… what is freestyle football? To describe it simply, freestyle football is an activity that uses all parts of the body to perform tricks with a football.
It’s a sport that’s massively gained in popularity over the last few years. When a huge Nike advertising campaign in the early 2000s showcased the ‘freestyle’ element of football, the sport really began to take off. Its popularity was heightened by the rise of social media, which gave freestylers like me a platform to show off their skills and spread the word about the sport. There are now roughly 5,000 professional freestylers in the world and at least 500,000 people who actively practise the sport.
For me, it was a YouTube video featuring Dutch freestyle pioneer, Soufiane Touzani, that first caught my attention about ten years ago. He was performing tricks I didn’t think were possible and I wanted to try to replicate the moves. I stumbled across a whole community of freestylers online sharing their tricks and ever since then, I’ve never looked back!
Other than being lucky enough to travel the world and make a living from something I love, my favourite thing about freestyling is the way it can make me feel completely stress-free. When I’m in my zone, it’s just me and the ball.
My favourite and arguably the most important skill that I’ve learnt over the years has to be the ‘around the world’ trick. This is when a freestyler balances the ball on the bridge of their foot, flicks it up to knee-level, loops their leg round the ball as it falls, and allows it to land back on the bridge. It’s the bread and butter freestyling skill and the one every beginner needs to master first! It’s also one of the tricks students can learn by taking part in Skills Academy.
As well as being entertaining, freestyle football is also a competitive sport. It’s the national and international competitions that really motivate me and allow me to show my real passion for the sport. After nine years of intense training, I’m now really proud to be ranked as the 2nd best freestyler in the UK and within the top 16 in the world.
Reading has also always been a really important part of the sport to me. When I first started freestyling, I would spend hours reading posts by my idols in freestyle forums on how they were training, and reading that information ultimately shaped me to become the freestyler I am today. I definitely think you should combine reading with your passions — when you’re reading something you’re interested in it can be so enjoyable.
