The Backroom Staff - Freestyle Football Artist: Emmi Björn

Freestyle Football Artist: Emmi Björn

Freestyle - where football skills & the circus meet!

At its core, football is about control, creativity, and mastery of the ball. Freestyle football takes these elements to an entirely new level - where skill becomes art and the ball transforms into an extension of the performer. In this world, the ‘players’ are called artists and they make the ball do the seemingly impossible.

Emmi Björn is a freestyler from Finland - she’s currently ranked 23rd in the world and is the highest ranked freestyler - male of female - in the Nordics. She has performed her skills around the world on the biggest stages, in the top competitions and as a member of the world famous circus show Cirque du Soleil (!).

In this interview, Emmi talks about her background, the freestyle community, training, her career and the future of freestyle football. Her story might even inspire you to pick up a ball and try a trick yourself! (If you want to watch some skills first - maybe start here 🤯 )

The interview has been condensed and lightly edited for grammar and clarity. 

Read on thebackroomstaff.com 

[ How did you get started playing football? ]

I’m from a super small town in Finland and there were not really any teams for girls. When I was maybe 8 years old, I saw the movie Bend It Like Beckham and asked my dad to buy me a ball. I started playing in the house and the yard, trying trick shots - sometimes breaking a plant vase or ruining the grass - my mom wasn’t too happy about it!

When I was 11 or 12, I joined an older girls team. They were 3 or 4 years older so they didn’t really like having younger players on the same team. After a couple of years, we finally had enough players (in our age group) and got our own team. I got obsessed with football and dreamed of becoming a professional player one day.

But, well, running wasn’t my thing and I wasn’t the strongest so I started to focus more and more on the technical side. Initially I was focusing on shooting well with both feet. I was on YouTube a lot watching tutorials and started to see a lot of tricks that people were doing with the ball. I wanted to be able to do that - to juggle and do a lot of keep ups.

One day, while scrolling on YouTube I came across the 2016 Red Bull Street Style Female Final - I was blown away. I couldn’t believe this was an actual sport, there are competitions for this and women were doing it. It was the coolest thing I’ve seen in my life.

I started to practice secretly at home when my parents were at work, so I wouldn't piss them off too much! I was 16 and wasn't confident in myself - I felt quite lost and didn't trust myself. At that time, some of my friends already knew what they wanted to do after upper secondary school and I had no idea what I wanted to do with my life.

I was scared to start but I kept following freestyle football. I moved to Helsinki after upper secondary school to study. I remember I was in a lecture and saw a story on Freestyle Finland (like the Freestyle Football Association in Finland) advertising a training session in one hour. I just left the lecture and went. I was so happy after that first training, I was crying like crazy when I got home. I remember calling my mom and saying, ‘Mom, I know what I want to do’. Since that day, I haven’t looked back.

[ Beginning your career in freestyle ]

At the beginning I started with basic tricks - all the guys were pushing ‘lowers’ a lot. Lowers are tricks like ‘around the world’ and these kinds of tricks where your foot goes around the ball while juggling. Unfortunately, I already had a lot of back problems and I wasn’t able to do these. Even now, you don’t really see lowers in my freestyle because I can’t physically do it. Lowers are how freestyle started and is seen as the ‘base’ of freestyle and helps a lot with control and mastering the other areas but lowers are not necessary, there are many freestylers who barely do them!

After only a month or two, I joined a competition with the Finnish national freestyle champions! I would say I was too demanding when I started, I was immediately thinking about competitions and getting on the podium, even in the first months. I wanted to show other people that I can do this and prove them wrong. It’s tricky with this mentality because you can easily lose the joy of the sport and I feel like that happened to me at some point as well.

[ How did you end up performing in Cirque du Soleil? ]

That’s something I still think about today - like, ‘how did that happen?!’

Social media is a pretty big part of freestyle. I think mainly because the community is super small and it’s easy to keep in touch with people all around the world. We even have training sessions online over Zoom to train with people who are far away. I get so much inspiration from watching others. So for me, it was always important to share my tricks online and I started right when I started freestyle - it’s really rewarding to see the progress over the last years.

My stage partner from Cirque du Soleil saw one of my videos that was shared on a freestyle football page. They were looking for a new female freestyle for the show and he checked out my profile and was impressed with how quickly I’d progressed (I’d only been doing freestyle for a little over a year at the time). He contacted me and asked me about my plans and helped me to get into the casting auditions for the role. Later, I was chosen to be his new stage partner for the Cirque du Soleil show Luzia.

Honestly, I had no idea about how big Cirque du Soleil was before actually going there! But I knew I wanted to travel and make a living out of freestyle one day, so I said, ‘why not?’

I started the tour in Canada in 2019. We had 8 or 9 shows per week depending where we were and then usually a couple of days off. The tour ended, or stopped for a while, in Moscow because of the pandemic. Afterward, I got a new contract for the European tour.

[ What does training look like for freestyle football? Do you have a coach? ]

My best coach so far has been YouTube! It’s full of tutorials. When I first started, there was no one really to help me out, so I took a lot of inspiration from there. Now, if I’m stuck on a trick I want to learn, I try to find someone in the community who is able to do it and ask for advice.

At the moment I train 6 days a week, sometimes twice per day. In the beginning, it was just ‘freestyle’ and I trained whatever I felt comfortable with. I try to continue this because for me, the most important thing when I’m training is to have fun. If I lose the joy, then the training is not worth it!

I also have a friend who is a physical trainer who helps me with a gym program twice a week to keep me in shape and help me with new tricks.

[ In a competition is your exact routine rehearsed or are you actually ‘freestyling’? ]

I'm very bad at routines and I love the freedom of not having to follow something 100%. If I have a routine and there’s a mistake in the middle, that messes up my head. So I think I’m at my best when I’m just freestyling.

For the competitions, you have to plan a little bit. These days, I’ll plan the main tricks I want to do and then I’ll build the rest on the way based on how I feel.

Usually, in a competition round, each freestyler has 3 sets of 30 seconds each and the rankings are determined via an ELO method - like tennis or chess.

—^interviewer’s note: Overview of Rules and Regulations in freestyle football

[ How often do you create a brand new trick? ]

I would say I have at least a couple of moves that I've never seen anyone else doing. Of course, I always try to create a new one if I have an idea but I don’t try to force it.

I have a nerve problem in my leg which limits me physically, so I haven’t been able to do lowers in a long time - that was my favorite thing to train for a while but I’ve kind of cut that part out. Now, thanks to this circus experience, I’ve been getting more interested in acrobatics and have been practicing bridges and handstands and stuff like that.

I still look on social media and if I see something interesting, it doesn’t necessarily mean copying a trick, but something might inspire me and I can make it in my own way.

[ Is freestyle your full-time job? ]

It's not my full time job right now. The main reason I don’t want to do the circus at the moment and would rather just do short contracts is because it’s much harder to focus fully on competitions. For example, I could never, ever train this much if I was on tour with the circus - it’s too tiring with all the travel and shows!

My ultimate dream, of course, would be to be sponsored and live completely from freestyle but for now, I’m happy with a regular job that is flexible and allows me to keep doing shows and short contracts.

[ Have you ‘busked’ on the street? ]

Yeah, I have one really nice memory. I was backpacking in Eastern Europe just before going to work at Cirque du Soleil. I actually got the congratulations email the day I left for the trip. So during that trip, I wanted to train as much as possible and get ready for this new opportunity.

I was a student back then and to make some money during that month, I had to do a bit of busking. Mainly alone but in some countries I met with freestylers - that’s what I love about the community, we only knew each other through social media but some of them even gave me accommodation during my trip. A few times, I also asked musicians if they wanted to perform together. It was a good way to train and prepare for the crazy adventure with Cirque du Soleil.

[ How has freestyle grown since you started? How do you hope it continues to grow? ]

I feel like it's getting more popular and there are more opportunities. In the female scene for example, when I started, at the World Championships there were barely 20 girls and now, it’s closer to 40 participating.

There are also more and more girls posting videos of their tricks and it makes me so happy to see more people taking part in this. The female level, in particular, has increased and improved so much in the past few years.

I was watching snowboarding on TV recently and I hope freestyle can get big enough that people can just turn on the TV and see a freestyle competition and get engaged.

Also, I’d love it if freestyle is seen as a sport. The most common question that I get when I go to events is ‘what team do you play on?’ so many people don’t see it as a sport and I hope that will change in the future. Of course, I’d like freestyle football to be in the Olympics, I’m not sure it’s happening soon but I hope sometime in the future it can be considered.

[ How do you see the relationship between football and freestyle football? ]

There are definitely freestylers who don't like that they're connected so strongly. But for me, I see it as an opportunity. The football world offers so many opportunities to showcase freestylers as well, and I see that more as a door that can open freestyle to everyone. It’s easier to get the sport in front of a bigger audience, so in that way, football really benefits us.

[ What do your future goals look like? ]

Because of some health issues, including nerve problems in my arm and leg that have limited what I can do with freestyle, I was thinking about what I’d do with my career and if I’m able to continue.

But recently, I’ve gotten some positive results and it looks like it will pass and won’t be permanent and I can continue.

So for now, the only thing I want to focus on is having fun while I’m training and getting better in each training session. I want to focus more on competitions too. Before, the competitions made me stress so much about the outcome but these days I love and enjoy the adrenaline I get on stage. I don’t set goals about the results anymore, instead I set goals like ‘I want to do this trick in the next competition’.

I’m really grateful for all the opportunities I’ve gotten and I just want to focus on being better and look forward to any new opportunities that will come.

Follow Emmi on Instagram and let her know you enjoyed the interview!

Have comments, questions or want to have your story featured on The Backroom Staff? send us a message or simply reply to this newsletter, we'll read it!

Read more interviews on The Backroom Staff 🙂