Shot by: Jonathan Oon , Russell Theseira

Edited by: Jonathan Oon

Freestyle football is the art of doing tricks with a football… but it’s not only the fancy moves which make this sport unique: freestyle is a lifestyle that transcends the sport to become a form of art.

The range of tricks a freestyler can do is simply endless. The roots of freestyle football as a global phenomenon date from back in the 1980s, when the Argentinian football legend Diego Armando Maradona started performing them in his famous warm-ups.

During the 1990s, the sport gained popularity particularly thanks to two South Korean freestylers, Mr Woo and Kang Sung Min, but it was not until the dawn of the new millennium when freestyle football made a huge leap forward: TV commercials starring Ronaldinho and Mr Woo launched the sport towards a huge mainstream audience, and Soufiane Touzani’s Youtube videos helped it reaching a new generation of players.

The newly created national and continental tournaments which appeared in the mid-2000s gave freestylers a boost of motivation to train and develop their own style. In 2008, freestyle football made its definitive step towards thanks to the support of Red Bull, which organised the first major global competition: Red Bull Street Style. Its first champion was the French Sean Garnier, who won the title in Brazil with a unique approach that had never been seen before.