Top freestylers Jesus Gomez Moreno of Spain, Nori of Japan and Peter Kovacs of Hungary put on a mesmerising show of football jugglery as the McDowell’s Freestyle Friendzy kicked off at the Lotus Club, Kochi on Friday.
Morno, Nori and Kovacs used almost all parts of their body to control the ball even while twisting, turning, sitting, rolling and even sleeping side-on, as Moreno did, with the ball safely placed on the temple.
“Freestyle football is basically an individual event but can be performed by a team too,” said Moreno. The freestyle exponents also interacted with local enthusiasts and shared their expertises with them. The nationwide event is spread over 21 cities and a freestyler each will be selected from among the participants in the contest in each city. The international freestylers, champions in their respective countries, will judge the competitors with the grand finale scheduled at Kolkata on December 18. The cities on the Freestyle Friendzy map include Kozhikode, Indore, Jaipur, Lucknow, Mangalore, Mysore, Hassan, Bangalore, Kolhapur, Pune, Mumbai, Nagpur, Bhubaneswar, Siliguri, Shillong, Guwahati and Jamshedpur besides Kochi and Kolkata.
India’s first freestyle training video with the visiting freestyle champions will be launched as part of the Freestyle Friendzy.
Source: The New Indian Newspaper, November 29, 2009
From the archive. First published on footballkerala.com on Tuesday 1 December 2009, restored from the site's 2012 database. Text as originally published.