Steve Elias (aka Eli Freeze)
On April 14th 1991, I had just finished a Sunday League game of football (scoring 2 goals i might add ;)), and went back to a friends house to watch the FA Cup Semi-Final of Tottenham Hotspur vs Arsenal in which Paul Gascoigne scored an incredible Freekick to send Spurs through to the Final and eventually win!! :)
Whilst I was being inspired by this… a 19 year old Steve Elias in Mississauga, Ontario, Canada was busy training Freestyle Football on his own in his back yard. No ‘Gazza’ to emulate or aspire to, just imagination and a love for the ball. Around this exact time, he was creating the SWRL move, which can be paralleled to the ‘Pendulum’ move in Footbag, however with a Football it was never done before. To try and describe it — with the ball clasped between your toes and your shin, you swing your leg behind you, letting go of the ball at it’s highest possible point, letting it then ‘swirl’ over your head and in front of your body to then carry on juggling the ball.
Anyway… Steve created that in a place that most of the world hadn’t heard of and without anyone to appreciate it other than himself!
I connected with Steve in 2010 after word of mouth from Daniel Rooseboom, Lucaso and others had suggested he was the main man in North America who could potentially join us in the quest for global recognition of Freestyle Football.
I remember the Skype call we had to this day. Instantly easy conversation and story after story of what he has experienced and loved about Freestyle ‘Soccer’. Pure passion. Pure love. What really stuck out, and I guess what I was kind of seeking from the call also was one line he spoke to me… ‘my friends used to ridicule me at school. I struggled to fit in as nobody played soccer, let alone knew what juggling a soccer ball was all about. But I told them that this is going to get big and one day there will be a World Association for this’.
Steve was the final piece of the puzzle. Way more business savvy than any of the community I had met to date and as such I didn’t want to presume his involvement. With Steve’s involvement we had a leader heading up each of the habitable continents on the planet and the makings of a Global Association.
We have shared so many hilarious stories together. But we have also had our differences too. Steve has sacrificed a LOT for Freestyle Football and what is sad is that most athletes of today and the future won’t understand or appreciate it. He made a good living from it — through sponsorships and managing athletes in the ‘Freestyle Soccer Inc’ team over the years. Tours of the US with Budweiser and Cheetos, TV commercials, image and skills printed on cereal boxes and much more. But I can testify that every cent of it not spent on his family, has been reinvested into the sport.
He created the brand ‘SWRL’ which offers shoes, balls and clothing for the community and fans. That’s no small task. He donates so so much to the community on a weekly basis that it constantly blows my mind and it is done with usually at most a hope that there is some credit or tags or support on social media… which often doesn’t even come!
So I raise my hat to Steve who is always and will always be there for the sport and art of Freestyle Football. In 2017 the HQ for the Governing Body of Freestyle Football was established in his home town of Mississauga, Ontario, to ease admin pressures on all fronts. Since then, Steve has been Executive Director along with Lucaso or the organisation and also he has assumed the role of ‘President’ to get the structure all established.
His name ‘Eli Freeze’ came from the ‘Freeze Out Bullying’ schools program that he launched. Check him out @elifreeze on social media channel and please share his story. An authentic man with a passion for life and Freestyle Football, which has directly fueled the growth of a sport from scratch. #allyouneedisaball
