The judge’s chair — Dimensions of freestyle football #1
Freestyle football has always been marred with controversies since the inception of its battle-format competitions. Needless to say that there is always a scope of error involved when there is human judgment involved in any decision, freestyle football has evolved itself to adapt to a format where the scope of error will never become zero.
Hello there, how are you guys doing? It’s been some time that we have interacted with each other on this platform. Nevertheless, I will be trying to put some ideas back here and see how it goes from there.
For those of you who do not know what a freestyle football competition is, it is a competition like all other competitions where several players battle each other to find the best one among them. Through a long process of qualifications and eliminations, a final winner is declared among the lot.
So in a freestyle football competition, what does a freestyle football battle round looks like? Well, some things are better left to YouTube
As you can see, in a typical freestyle football battle, there are three rounds for each player where they take turns to showcase their skills in a 30-second time restricted round(not the point of this article). At the end of their performances, there are 3 (or sometimes 5) judges who give their decision on who the winner is, according to them.
Classically, the judges used to judge the players on these criteria —
- Control
- All round abilities
- Originality and flow
- Variation within battles and in the overall competition
- Difficulty of tricks
Before the inception of a newer judging format, a judge used to form an overall perspective keeping all or most of the above criteria in mind and then make a decision, choosing the best out of the given competitors.
Do you see the problem here? Do you? Sure? Well, if you don’t, let me spill the milk here.
The decision being given is from a human’s perspective of the battle seconds ago. Within seconds, he has to evaluate these skills and give a decision. And if there is one thing we know, it’s that human mind is a fickle son of a b***h. It can generate ideas and opinions based on thousands of things in the present or the past. In short, you cannot always trust a judge’s decision.
So is there an alternative?
Not really.
At the end of the day, we can only make the system more foolproof in order to avoid any unwanted decisions in a battle. This has led to a number of measures being taken by the WFFA, the governing body of freestyle football in the world right now.
Some of them are -
- All must be associated with freestyle football and active in the scene for more than 4 years and approved by WFFA expert in the first stage of the organization.
- A head judge is assigned the responsibility for the whole panel regarding timing, distribution of sheets and proper briefing.
- Judges should all have a short explanation detailing why they made the decision they have at the time they announce the winner of a battle In case they are asked, they must be able to defend their decision.
- Judges are not allowed to use a so-called “blank vote” in case they are not sure with result. There must be a decision in any case.
And finally, they have come up with a whole new battle evaluation system in which each judge will make the decision based on the criteria allotted to them. I would recommend you to read more about the new rules here under the Judging criteria 4.0 section.
So while human error cannot be completely eliminated from a freestyle football battle, these steps do inspire confidence among the players and organizers of a freestyle football competition.
I will be sharing my personal experience in judging freestyle football competitions sometime soon also. So watch out for that!
Till then. Peace.
This article is a part of my publication Freestyle Works. It is an independent freestyle football publication and I try to spread ideas about freestyle football through it.
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