a method to identify and evaluate the performance of ...

A METHOD TO IDENTIFY AND EVALUATE THE PERFORMANCE OF FREESTYLE FOOTBALL PLAYERS ACCORDING TO COMPETITION CRITERIA CASANOVA SAMUEL M. Student of sports science and recreation and specialization in management of sport and recreation. Technological University of Pereira [email protected]

Abstract: In freestyle football the skill of juggling a ball it’s the most important element of the control. Control is one of the three aspects (the other two aspects are: style and creativity) that a freestyle footballer player or freestyle footballer, must show as a part of their routine in a competition. In many of these competitions the judging is very subjective and personal, often questioned for its lack of impartiality. The aim of this paper is to provide an objective evaluation method based on measuring the number of touches and drops that has a freestyle footballer in competition, and using a level of effectiveness to determine which freestyle footballer scored a higher percentage of ball control in comparison to his or her opponent. And as a final consideration, we suggest that technologies can be used to facilitate the measurement of these aspects in the future. Keywords: football freestyle, performance criteria, judging, effectiveness. 1. INTRODUCTION Freestyle football is an incredible sport, it consists in to control and juggling a ball with almost entire body (Freestyle Football Federation 2013). It also is an art fully appreciated in the 21st century, which has allowed its evolution and expansion in recent years, by implementing more acrobatics, more dynamics in the movements and new tricks that have captivated more and many more practitioners and companies worldwide to promote the sport. Some companies like Red Bull, have been committed to the sport in several international competitions and have supervised every detail so that this sport have a great popularity and becomes in a great show for everyone. (Red Bull 2012). But many people may not understand how these freestyle footballers become so skilled, what determines their performance skills, or worse, they don’t understand how the evaluation mechanism works to choose the best of them. As an open and free sport, there are no certain criteria objective ratings, in order to quantify the performance of these freestyle footballers who are competing. A problem that is sometimes misunderstood by many freestyle footballers, they don’t understand the decision of the judges who provide the decision, and sometimes don’t share this decision and strongly criticized. Therefore, it is urgent to implement an evaluation method based on measuring the amount of movement that produces real-time freestyle footballer. This method of evaluation is to ensure the If you will use some information from this article remember to cite this article with his DOI. Modification, reproduction or copying of this document without first contacting the author for his permission is prohibited.

objectivity of the actions of all participants in correspondence with the competition. This should be considered as a possible replacement for the current method of subjective, critical and partial valuation which has been evaluated in previous competitions. To understand this issue, it is necessary to examine the standard competition format is now used worldwide, and was created by Red Bull. This standard competition format called battle mode, is one of the few modes of play in freestyle football, in which 2 players face off in a space of about 7 meters in diameter approximately (see Figure 1). For 3 minutes, players take turns a soccer ball every 30 seconds, for a total of 3 rounds of 30 seconds per player. In each round of 30 seconds, the player with the ball must impress the jury, dominating the ball and showing that it has better a level of control, creativity and style than his opponent. (Red Bull 2014). These considerations are based on the following aspects; 

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Creativity or variety: The winner must demonstrate a high comfort level in all the techniques of the sport. Judges look for the freestyle footballer more innovative and original who makes different variations in their movements with all the body and allowed the ball to run both on the ground and the air. However, if a freestyle footballer starts to repeat certain movements previously executed, it is possible that your routine becomes monotonous and boring, which is not well appreciated by the judges. Control or technique: This is the element most technical part in this sport. The difficulty, originality and quality of execution of the movements are the basic ingredients of control. Carelessness to receive the ball, using your hands to make mistakes and execute movements so the ball does not fall to the ground, is not well appreciated by the judges. Energy and rhythm or style: Style is as valuable as the creativity and control. The player with good style usually performed his movements without much effort and with some softness in them. The connection to the music is very important because it can play in favor of the player, if he can attract positively to the public to coordinate their movements with the music.

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Figure 1. Competition scenario of the battle mode in freestyle football. It can be seen on the left side of the photograph, the panel of judges, the central part is the area bounded battles, and around them, the public and the different media are hosting the event. Source: Red Bull Street Style Word Final 2013 Tokyo. The decision of the winner may be taken as a unanimous vote by all judges or personal vote of each of the judges, in this latter situation it must be remembered that there is an odd number of judges, means that there is an additional vote that will give a winner with at least one vote. The number of judges may vary as has happened in previous competitions, where they had used a panel of three judges, those who qualified; style, control and creativity. Evaluating in a subjective way, who would have been the winner (Red Bull 2013a). Since 2007, date in which Red Bull launched its first competitions in the battle mode, previously seen, a panel of three judges was implemented, those who evaluated individually; style, control and creativity. Until October 2012, only was used the panel of 3 judges for the qualifying stages. In the same year, in the world final in Lecce, the panel was changed, and five judges for the final phase or phase of the 16 best players of the tournament were used. The aspects that were rated were: style, best trick, creativity, control and overall level of performance (Sjölander 2012). From 2013 to the present day, both in panels 3 judges, used to the qualifying stages as in panels of 5 judges used to the final phase or the top 16 players (in competitions such as Red Bull Street Style), judges have evaluated in overall way; style, control and creativity. This overall aspect has been called, "All around"(Red Bull 2013b). Therefore, the following questions arise: Actually is evaluating and prioritizing the most important element of football freestyle appropriately? Is being evaluated in these competitions fair and impartial manner?


2. METHODS As answers to these questions, it is essential to know that to achieve efficiency in the functions of decision and evaluation, should occur certain requirements, which ensure what should be essential behavior for judging in the sport; objectivity (Guardo and Fleitas 2004). According to Caracuel, Andreu, and Pérez (1995), objectivity is one of the conditions necessary to achieve a fair and just action; these are fundamental characteristics of a good judgment. In this sense, it is evident that the condition of objectivity is a qualitative aspect determinant in the development of the process of any judge and is essential for the quality of the ratings, so it has always be a constant in the activity of all kinds of sports to judging.

Therefore, must be created procedures to the maximum development of objective conditions in each sport situations, a possible example of these procedures is the following method which is proposed in this paper. Our method of evaluation focuses on measuring the touches and drops that has a freestyle footballer in each round, throwing a level effectiveness of the control of the ball, based on the touches and drops, being thus a comparable method of objectively with his opponent. Therefore, the decision that will be provided will be based on an objective criterion, based on the score that the freestyle footballer has obtained about your opponent, and not in a judgment subjectively without qualitative criteria. This decision may not be questioned and shall not be appealable. Now, considering the touches and drops that a freestyle footballer may have, is necessary to understand what these concepts refer. Touches A hit or touch is the initial impact or contact with the freestyle footballer hits the ball with any part of the body permitted in freestyle football, and unlike other next touch, because there must be a considerable elevation of the ball on the area of contact. It is extremely recognizable identify when this action happens, which can be confused when the ball hit the area of contact seems to rise from it, but it is not. This phenomenon often happens because the freestyle footballer can make multiple circular and rotational movements, with his body or some part of it, using a single touch or a single area of contact with the ball. (see Figure 2). It is here where it would be hard work to recognize and count the number of touches with the ball.


Figure 2. Sequence of a characteristic movement of the freestyle football technique, Upperbody. An example of how a freestyle footballer performs different movements, without the ball rises considerably in their contact area. Source: youtube.com - Red Bull Street Style Lecce 2012 Teaser. Drops The drops in freestyle football happen, when the freestyle footballer loses control of the ball and indeed it hits the ground without prior notice. To recognize this action, only is enough with known when the freestyle footballer finds the ball quickly which is on the ground and tries to lift it again, this phenomenon is sometimes confused with several movements in freestyle football (see Figure 3). But there are other situations where the freestyle footballer tries to hide this drop making it part of your routine, here is where it is essential recognize when there is a drop to purpose and when no. Is why the person that deemed assess the drops, must have a broad knowledge about what drops are part of the routine of the freestyle footballer, and which are not.

Figure 3. Sequence of a characteristic movement of the freestyle football technique, Lowerbody. An example of how a freestyle footballer allows the ball drop it between in his feet, so he can get the ball back, without the ball touches the ground in no time. Source: youtube - Blocking Combo Tutorial – Learn2Freestyle. Once you have been quantified the touches and drops that have had each one of the freestyle footballer in each round, to get a first approximation of the level of control of these, total sum of all the touches and drops that have had in all the rounds is made. And finally, with the totals of the touches and drops, the percentage of effectiveness is made. This percentage of effectiveness of each round, is based on the number of successes, mean If you will use some information from this article remember to cite this article with his DOI. Modification, reproduction or copying of this document without first contacting the author for his permission is prohibited.

touches that the freestyle footballer did perform with the ball, divided the total number of attempts; mean the sum of touches and drops and this in turn multiplied by 100. 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑠𝑢𝑐𝑐𝑒𝑠𝑠𝑒𝑠 (𝑇𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠) 𝑝𝑒𝑟 100 𝑁𝑢𝑚𝑏𝑒𝑟 𝑜𝑓 𝑎𝑡𝑡𝑒𝑚𝑝𝑡𝑠 (𝑆𝑢𝑚 𝑜𝑓 𝑡𝑜𝑢𝑐ℎ𝑒𝑠 𝑎𝑛𝑑 𝑑𝑟𝑜𝑝𝑠) Now, the final percent efficiency is obtained with the same formula, but using the sum of the successes or touches and the attempts or the sum of touches and drops of all the rounds, and the result is compared with the next global assessment scale, according to the resulting percentage range (see Table 1). SCORE Equal to 5 From 4 to 4,9 From 3,0 to 3,9 From 2,0 to 2,9 From 1,0 to 1,9 From 0 to 0,9

% EQUIVALENT Equal to 100 From 80 to 99 From 60 to 79 From 40 to 59 From 20 to 39 From 0 to 19

Table 1. Global rating scale according to the percentage issued. It is worth noting, that this scale can also be used to give a descriptive rating of the performance of the freestyle footballer in style and creativity, through personal observation by assigning a score according to attributes such as for example: No style (From 0 to 0.9), With little style (From 1.0 to 1.9), With a bit of style (From 2.0 to 2.9), With a good style (From 3.0 to 3.9) Very stylish (From 4.0 to 4.9), Perfect style! (Equal to 5). 3. RESULTS Now, taking as an example the battle for the championship title Red Bull Street Style 2013 disputed in Tokyo, and using our method to evaluate the performance of the freestyle footballers according to competition criteria, the following data according to touches and falls that had each of the two players were recorded (see Table 2). REDBULL STREET STYLE 2013 WORLD FINAL TOKIO Competition name Player B Player A CHARLY (ARG) SZYMO (POL) TC DP EF% TC DP EF% 43 1 97,7 40 2 95,2 ROUND 1 ROUND 1 42 1 97,7 15 1 93,8 ROUND 2 ROUND 2 32 2 94,1 37 2 94,9 ROUND 3 ROUND 3 117 4 96,7 92 5 94,8 TOTAL TOTAL TC: Touches; DP: Drops; EF%: Percentage of effectiveness Table 2. Quantitative data of touches, drops, and level of effectiveness that the freestyle footballers had in competition.


It can be seen, as the Player A, got more touches and better number of drops, which will definitely result in a higher percentage of effectiveness. Indeed, this percentage of effectiveness would give as a winner of the battle to the Player A, if only was evaluating the control, as a global and objective aspect. However, it would not be appropriate evaluate a single aspect; this would be to misunderstand the nature and importance of the other two aspects in the battle mode of freestyle football. Despite their having a qualitative character and that only it can assign a descriptive classification by assigning a score based on qualitative attributes, as previously proposed, also it must be assigned a percentage distribution that is equivalent to the total score of the freestyle footballer. As proposed this method, we assign a 50% to control, 25% to creativity and 25% to style. On this occasion, it was assigned a random score from 0 to 5, in the aspects of creativity and style to issue a total score (see Table 3). REDBULL STREET STYLE 2013 WORLD FINAL TOKIO Competition name Player B Player A CHARLY (ARG) SZYMO (POL) TC DP EF% TC DP EF% 43 1 97,7 40 2 95,2 ROUND 1 ROUND 1 42 1 97,7 15 1 93,8 ROUND 2 ROUND 2 32 2 94,1 37 2 94,9 ROUND 3 ROUND 3 117 4 96,7 92 5 94,8 TOTAL TOTAL CONTROL (50% OF THE TOTAL SCORE) 2,4 2,4 STYLE (25% OF THE TOTAL SCORE) With a good style Stylish 1,0 1,2 CREATIVITY (25% OF THE TOTAL SCORE) With good creativity With good creativity 1,0 1,0 TOTAL SCORE 4,3 4,5 The total score ranges from 0 to 5,0. The player with the highest score wins the battle. WINNER SZYMO (POL) TC: Touches; DP: Drops; EF%: Percentage of effectiveness Table 3. Template for judging battles mode according to our proposed method of evaluation. An example about how could be qualified the performance of the freestyle footballers, according to objective evaluation criteria. 4. DISCUSSIONS There are many situations where this evaluation method can be effective. Suppose a freestyle footballer in the first round, drops the ball to the ground half of the time that makes contact with it. This will force the freestyle footballer to strive not to drop the ball in the last rounds and also to having a greater dynamism and creativity to do the movements,


in order to increase efficiency in the control. Therefore, the percentage of effectiveness is a quantitative determinant to estimate the performance of the freestyle footballer, when evaluating the control that had with the ball during each of the situations of competition. Although the style and creativity are aspect essentials to evaluate the overall performance of a freestyle footballer, there are no performance criteria that can be objectively determined. Therefore, the control should be a high percentage rating of a total score, as it is the only aspect that can objectively measure and compare the overall performance of your opponent. It is also important to know that there are other game modes in freestyle football, so it is necessary to note that aspects can be shared with the game mode seen in this article and that other aspects can be really classifiable and measurable, taking objective criteria. And finally, we must consider that in freestyle football there very fast movements that are indistinguishable to the naked eye, and therefore the measurement of the touches (in greater proportion than falls) is often not clear. Recently the sports company adidas has developed a smart ball, in that can be made measurements of how, how often and how hard the football players hit the ball, in addition to capturing the trajectory, and point hit of the ball. These integrated sensors into the ball, send the information in real time via Bluetooth to an app designed for smartphones. In addition, the ball has almost all the conditions to be approved by FIFA in its various competitions, part of it, is the external sensor integrated that allows to hone the skills of beating of a football player, such as the reaction of the ball to hit, which makes your touch will be identical to an official ball. (adidas 2013). Thereby, if sports organizations such as FIFA, recently has approved and implemented technologies to measure the performance of the football players (FIFA 2014). Why not apply these technologies freestyle football so they can facilitate these measurements? 5. REFERENCES adidas. adidas miCoach: The Interactive Personal Coaching and Training System 2013. Caracuel, JC, R Andreu, and E Pérez. 1995. "Análisis psicológico del arbitraje y juicio deportivos. Una aproximación desde el modelo interconductual." Motricidad no. 1:5-24. FIFA. El índice Castrol: una medida del rendimiento - FIFA.com 2014. Freestyle Football Federation. Home | Freestyle Football Federation 2013. Guardo, ME, and CI Fleitas. 2004. "Hacia una teoría del arbitraje deportivo: introducción." Lecturas: Educación Física y deportes no. 68. Red Bull. Red Bull Street Style - News 2012. Red Bull. Red Bull Street Style - News 2013a. Red Bull. Red Bull Street Style - News 2013b. Red Bull. Red Bull Street Style | Red Bull 2014. Sjölander, Rickard. Red Bull Street Style 2012 | Professional Football Freestyler Palle 2012.
