Their art is becoming very popular in Vietnam, especially in Hanoi, where the country’s first freestyle football group, Around the World (ATW), was formed.

Created by Hoang Nam Truong, Do Kim Phuc and a few other young people in October 2007, ATW now boasts hundreds of members.

Their website www.bongdanghethuat.com, which Truong administers, is even more popular and has over 2,000 registered members.

Once a week they gather to practice and show off before a keen bunch of spectators. They also get invited to perform at high schools and universities.

Another member, Quoc Anh, says the freestylers are proud to demonstrate their hard-won skills and feel excited when they have an appreciative audience.

He says they want to promote the sport as a healthy and artistic exercise for everyone.

Their impromptu and formal juggling acts draw crowds of spectators, and parents often send their kids to the group after chancing upon freestylers performing in the park, Truong says.

ATW’s members come mainly from the Hanoi University of Technology, the Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology (PTIT), or the National Economics University, but there is a growing number of high school students joining in, too.

They say that with a pair of sneakers, a ball and enthusiasm, anyone can take up freestyle football and master some of the tricks within six months.

“When I first saw video clips of freestylers in action, I thought the tricks would be far too hard to master, but now not only me but every ATW member can control the ball skillfully,” Truong says.

Doan Thanh Tung from PTIT says he learned about freestyle football through watching foreign video clips on the Internet one year ago.

“I never thought I could do certain difficult tricks, but I managed it after only two months of practice. Now I’m trying to work out new and better tricks,” Tung says.

Tung has gained quite a reputation for the way he incorporates hip-hop dancing into freestyle football.

Like Tung, many freestylers have achieved local fame thanks to their creativity with the ball.

Do Kim Phuc, for example, came up with a trick that was subsequently named DKP after him.

More than just a group of people with a common interest, ATW’s members are practicing hard to become the one who represents them at the World Freestyle Football Championship in South Africa next year.

At the same time, Truong is planning to hold a national freestyle football championship within the next two years to make the sport better known here and show the world that freestyle football is thriving in Vietnam.

From fan to initiator

One of the pioneers of freestyle football in Vietnam, Truong was hooked the moment he first saw the world’s top freestylers in action on television.

At the time he was in France studying for his master’s degree in marketing.

He took to the Internet to find out as much as he could about the sport. The more he learned and the more video clips he watched, the more he was determined to become a freestyler himself.

As he practiced, Truong found it helped him relax after long hours of study, he says.

It was his encounter with the world-famous freestyler Nguyen Hoai Nam, alias “Nam the Man,” that inspired Truong to spread the word in his native land.

“When I first saw Nam on video, I guessed he was an Asian guy but never thought he was Vietnamese. After all, how could a Vietnamese person be so good at a sport that didn’t even exist here at the time?”

Or so he thought. In fact, the video clips had been made in Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City.

“When I realized that, I was thrilled to bits.”

He got in touch with Nam, who had introduced the sport to Vietnam in 2006 and created a freestyle football website with fellow enthusiast Dang Long of HCMC.

“It was my passion for the sport and the meeting with Nam that led me to form ATW and become the administrator of www.bongdanghethuat.com,” says Truong.

Source: TN, TT