Billy Wingrove SER Interview

With his silky moves and impossible tricks, Billy Wingrove has turned quite a few heads as of late, and SER was fortunate enough to be able to sit down with him and ask him a few questions.

The 27 year old Briton, a YouTube phenomenon, is arguably one of the best free-style footballers in the world, and SER was able to get a few questions across to him. See what Billy Wingrove had to say to our questions.

• How long have you been free styling? As a professional, for 5 years now, and before that since I was around 15 and when I knew I wasnt going to make it to the top as a pro player

• Did you have any idols growing up and who were they? Yes, first idol was Maradona, I loved watching his skills when he used to practice with a tennis ball, golf ball or orange. As a big Spurs Fan, Paul Gascoigne and Ossie Ardiles were also big heroes of mine.

• What made you want to become a freestyle footballer? It just came about naturally really. I always wanted to be a footballer first & foremost. When I was young, there was no such thing as a freestyler, but I just used to have a ball with me wherever I went and always practiced football tricks and skills. When my friends went home to play computer games I always stayed out and practiced different tricks on my own and before long developed good ball control where I could start mastering tricks I saw on Nike commercials or websites.

• What’s your favorite thing about free styling? The crowd reactions. If you get good feedback from an audience it can make you perform 50% better. If you get no response you feel like you’re not entertaining them.

• What would you like to do with your free styling? I would like to use freestyle as a way of improving the next generation of footballers by bringing the skills from the streets to the pitch. All freestylers have great ball control and there are some amazing freestylers out there now, far better than I was at the same age. So if they can learn to use that ball control on the pitch and improve their touch, coordination and confidence on the ball we will all be watching far better football than we are now in years to come.

• Have you thought about pursuing a professional career in regular football? Yes, I dreamed of playing for Spurs as my father did and my cousin played for local rivals Arsenal, but although I was quick and skillful enough, I was always too small and thin to be taken on by Spurs and so ended up playing semi-professional. I’ve had offers from Teams in the US & Japan to play pro, but I’ve made a great career for myself as a freestyler now and as I’m now Tottenham’s official freestyler so its as close as I could get to being a Spurs player.