Freestyle Football is trendy nowadays, but how and where it evolved?

Freestyle Football is trendy nowadays, but how and where it
evolved?

In this day and age, we often see freestylers perform
ridiculous and yet amazing tricks and moves not only on TV
advertisement but on the internet as well. Whenever I play
footy with my fellow friends, they enjoy doing fancy
footwork regularly which sometimes makes me envy and
sometimes amazes me as well. At the time, I wondered how and
where it all began.

I took the initiative to ask a couple of my friends and
browse through forums. Most of them thought freestyle
football came from Brazil because a lot of amazing skillful
kids and players out there who can do bizarre tricks that
are not even in the book. But some say it came from Holland
probably because of Edgar Davids' background and how he used
to play at the backyards with his friends.

Where it began remains unknown and mysterious among us
football fanatics. Prior to the late 90s, players like Pele,
Johan Cruyff, De Stefano and others all juggled a ball for
practice to improve their control techniques (touches,
balance, coordination).

After that, freestyle football really took off in the early
80s when Diego Maradona displayed his mastery in control
(juggle a ball, an orange, a golf ball, a tennis ball etc)
and performed in half-time shows during Argentine Clausura
matches. In fact, one of his famous skills of all time was
the Maradona 7 where a player juggle the ball with the right foot, then the left foot, followed by the right thigh, then
the left thigh, subsequently the right shoulder, then the
left shoulder and finally the head.


While Maradona became successful and popular, others tried
to follow but failed. His brilliance inspired Hao Young Woo,
a South Korean who worked extremely hard to develop his
juggling skills and eventually earned a reputation as a
football entertainer and inspired new generation such as
Abbas Farid as well.

As the years gone by, most freestyle players were Mr. Woo
inspired, preferring to juggle and control the ball using
all parts of the body only. Until the early 21st century,
Touzani and Nelson were among the new generation of
freestylers preferring fancier tricks with different
combination and variations of around-the-worlds and other
lower body tricks. Both Touzani and Nelson and other
freestylers compete in Amsterdam for the MOTG (Masters of
the Game) competition in 2003.

Back in the days of Pele, Maradona and Cruyff, the word
"freestyle" was unknown and no one has ever heard that word
before in the world of soccer at least until the late 90s.
Then, in the late 21st century, Nike came in as they
launched an advertising campaign promoting the players and
the competition. One of campaigns is to allow participants
to submit their own video clip and receive feedback
worldwide at NikeFootball. Thus, opens the door for the
likes of Touzani and Abbas Farid to display their skills
worldwide and become more popular.

In addition, other service companies such as You Tube,
Google Video, Yahoo Video, Metacafe, Grouper, iFilm and
others provide similar websites that allows you to upload
your own videos including your own football clips. So that
other would-be freestylers are able to submit their own
video as well.

Although recent changes made throughout the decade
especially the internet have raise it's popularity, people
are yet to know the origins of freestyle football and will
continue to speculate it.