The F2 Freestylers — From a Real Freestyler’s perspective

Ankit Yadav
the freestyle works
4 min readApr 1, 2018

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Some video with more than a million views

I am going to straight go into this, cause I have a lot to talk about.

If you ask a random happy-to- go person on the street, who the best football freestylers in the world are, chances are that they will reply the F2 Freestylers.

Seems fair (From the person’s perspective)! If their YouTube channel has about 6 million subscribers and more than 300 million views, then it is safe to assume that they are going to be one of the more popular guys out there.

Those who don’t know about the F2 guys, they are two guys Billy Wingrove and Jeremy Lynch who run a Football skills based YouTube channel and have a mass fan following over various social media channels. They are sponsored by Adidas and probably a dozen more football related things.

Coming back to the question, are F2 Freestylers the best football freestylers in the world? How can I put this in a nice way. NO DUCKING WAY!!

They are not the best freestylers in the world, not the best in Europe and definitely not the best in their own country Britain. Actually they might not be the best if you compare them with the level of a lot of countries around the world.

I actually like saying the word.

Coming to the next question. So if the F2 Freestylers are not the best football freestylers in the world (by a long distance), so what are they ?

They are what their channel describes them they are. Ultimate soccer skills channel. Yes! If you are looking for something entertaining to watch and you are die-hard soccer fan, then go and watch their videos by all means. The content that they have is awesome and highly entertaining to watch.

The problem here is,

The differentiation between soccer skills and freestyle football skills.

What the world has cruelly if I may say so, is given freestyle football the definition of doing tricks or skills with a football. Now, from an angle that is true. That is what the freestylers are doing — tricks with a football. But they never bothered to draw a border between football tricks and freestyle football.

The true definition of freestyle football should be the art/sport of self-expression with a football using our body. Now this art has evolved a lot more than just flicking up the ball or balancing it on the head sideways. What people are doing now, is just the proof that physical and mental limits are created just to be pushed.

The above video is the most apt example of how much freestyle football has evolved and how much more it scope it has in the foreseeable future.

So what is the problem? How is it that the F2 are so much more popular than people who really deserve the actual recognition and all the accolades ?

The answer — Media

The mass media just pushes things into the spotlight that are more entertaining than original hence making them more popular. And we come to believe whatever is being fed to us is the best thing out there. Mass media driven exceptionalism is believed to be true without verification of the facts and logic behind the stories.

And even though the F2 Freestylers are babies in the actual freestyle football universe, they do know two things -

  1. What kind of content catches more eyeballs.
  2. And, how to grab more eyeballs using their balls(footballs of course)

And hence, the perfect combination of the above two skills made them exceptionally famous among the youth and anyone else interested in football and football skills.

So do they do anything wrong?

I don’t know to be honest. Who the fuck am I to question who have been creating content even before I started in this field? But just one thing.

I wish they had not used the term Freestylers in their Brand name. It took away all the credibility from the actual people who push their levels and call themselves freestylers. What gives them the right to be called the World’s best freestylers when they have contributed almost zero to the actual building of the sport and its structure around the world? When did you see these guys in an actual freestyle football meet or even a real competition? NEVER!

So yeah. Keep on creating more funny and entertaining content for the mediocre crowd out there. We’ll be in our other part of the world, creating new moves and pushing our boundaries as usual.

And well for Daniel Dennehy, his song was just a promotion stunt to use famous people’s name to put himself in spotlight. So he’s got better skills than F2? Well, a lot of people do. So, Chill bro!

Thanks for reading. Appreciate your time people. Do leave your hate comments down below (If you are an F2 fan).

This article is a part of my publication Freestyle Works. It is the only independent freestyle football publication right now in the world and I run it to spread new and unique ideas about freestyle football.

Give a clap if you liked what you read. Follow this publication for the more stories. Talk to me down in the comments section if you have any suggestions or a demand for me.

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Ankit Yadav
the freestyle works

A student, freestyle footballer, learner. Co-founder of Freestyle Works. Living in India