Football freestylers on the rise in Singapore

SINGAPORE — With a swift flick of the stationary football, Terence Ong brought it up in mid-air and magic seemingly followed.

He appeared to keep the ball suspended in the air for a few seconds as he circled his foot over it several times.

Then, as he flicked it over his head, he immediately made a handstand, and caught the ball between his heel and the back of his thigh.

Ong then passed the ball to Terry Lee, who did a complex routine while sitting on the floor and looked like he was performing a choreographed dance.

Both Ong, 30, and Lee, 29, do this for a living. They are professional football freestylers, and part of a growing community of — involving casual hobbyists and more serious performers and “footsmiths” — here in Singapore.

The duo know more than 50 tricks each involving flicking, juggling, heading, and spinning a football, and basically going “freestyle” with it.

Armed with their skills, they perform regularly at corporate events, product launches, roadshows, and weddings to name a few.

And they not only make a decent living out of it, but also get to perform all over the world.

Ong and Lee charge over S$1,000 for a 30-minute show, and average about a gig weekly. That is a leap from when they had just one show a month when they first started out about 10 years ago. At times, they even went without a gig for months.

They also earn money conducting freestyle lessons.

These days, Ong and Lee have also performed in countries such as Mexico, Germany, Australia, South Korea, and Taiwan.

Back home, their growing portfolio includes numerous events for companies and brands such as Singtel, Nike, Adidas and Puma. They were also part of the 2010 Journey of the Youth Olympic Flame, and last year’s Barclays Asia Trophy.

They have also done print advertisements, and television commercials.

HUMBLE STARTS

Both Ong and Lee, regarded in the football freestyling community as pioneers, were former youth team players at local S.League clubs, but never found much success into rising up to the senior team. The duo met at an anti-smoking event held in a school in 2009, and decided to venture into the football freestyle business.

“So instead of being a professional footballer where you have to compete with so many others for a first-team spot, I thought why not I do something different, and do some tricks with the ball with my strong football foundation,” said Lee, who along with Ong, spent up to four hours a day for more than six months watching YouTube videos of football freestyle tricks, and practising.

Apart from relying on gigs, the licensed buskers also performed on the streets to make ends meet.

Struggling through periods of poor business, they finally got their first big break when they took part in an audition for a theatrical play in Naples, Italy, called “Football, football” and were selected.

The play, which opened in May 2010, was performed 15 times over three continents (Asia, Europe and Africa). It premiered in Singapore and had its final show in South Africa in October.

“Things started picking up very quickly after that. After that play and the 2010 Youth Olympic Games in Singapore in which we were involved, our popularity shot up,” recounted Lee.

“Event companies began to contact us for gigs locally and overseas, and schools also reached out to us for football freestyle workshops.

“It was a risk venturing into this business, but it has paid off. Now, we even have a partnership with Adidas who came on board as our apparel sponsor this year on a one-year contract.”

GROWING COMMUNITY

As their business grew, the football freestyle community has grown in tandem too.

“The community here is growing, from about just five of us practising it in Singapore almost a decade ago when we set up a football freestyle team called the Urban Street Team (UST), to almost 100 of us now,” said Lee, who owns UST with Ong.

“But the community is still fragmented. There is a group of us who know one another and practise together sometimes. And then there are also individual hobbyists who are doing it casually and perhaps too shy or not confident enough to do it in public yet.

“Our goal is to bring the community together, grow it, and have more freestylers become professionals.

“We want more people to know that it can be a sustainable source of income and you can earn a decent pay cheque from it.”

At UST - which Ong and Lee said is the only football freestyle set-up in Singapore — the duo performs with eight other professional football freestylers, including six Singaporeans, a Thai and an Indonesian.

They also conduct lessons and have about 30 students now, from just about a handful in their first year of business in 2009 when they used to teach at Scape at Orchard.

Their pupils — most of whom signed with them through word-of-mouth — ranged from age 6 to 18, and the oldest person they have coached was a 45-year-old man from Malaysia, although he has since left them.

“Business is brisk, and has picked up too as more people got to know us, especially over the past two or three years,” said Ong.

“Event companies have us on their list of entertainers to source for, and corporates know how to find us.

“The pro football freestylers from our country are also getting international recognition from performing at events, and also from competitions, which help our business here.”

Perhaps unbeknown to many, in 2014, Singapore had a football freestyler from UST, Daryl Low, at the World Finals of the Red Bull Street Style competition in Brazil, after international judges watched YouTube videos of him performing some freestyle tricks and invited him to the competition.

Last November, three other UST freestylers – Danial Haziq, Shahrul Kamil, Ho Jia Wei – also competed in the Asian Freestyle Football Championships (AFFC) in Indonesia. They all finished in the top 32 out of the over-100 strong field.

“Terence and I started football freestyling when we were almost 20, and we are coaching young kids now, who can do better than us in the future with them starting it from young,” said Lee.

“It is possible that in three years’ time, we can have a champion from Singapore at the AFFC.”

WHAT IS FOOTBALL FREESTYLE?

It is the art of self-expression with a football, while performing various tricks with it with any part of the body.

Football freestyle can be divided into four main disciplines:

Lower-body/Air Moves: This is the most popular with the new generation of freestylers. The ball is kept aloft using mainly the feet and legs. This style is considered to be the most difficult and the one that gives a multitude of opportunities to come up with new moves and impressive combinations.

Upper-body: This style is very popular in Japan and Russia. Most tricks are done with the head, chest and shoulders.

Sit Down: This style has become well-known. All tricks are executed while sitting on the floor with your legs in the air, and the inability to move after the ball greatly increases the difficulty of any trick performed.

Ground moves: These are normal football moves, but then executed without an opponent. Skillful players can make the performance of groundmoves seem like a choreographed dance.