Free Kick Masters Background Information
Free kick Masters is an interesting competition in which top soccer players take free kicks at goalkeepers from different distances and angles in an aim to score more points. It's not an official FIFA tournament but usually involves a number of top players and a large number of their fans. The outcome of the competition is usually the emergence of a “Free Kick Master” and “Golden Goalkeeper”. This event is the only one in the world that features top football players in individual competition against one another.
The event was introduced by a group of individuals involved in world wide soccer, in a bid to challenge the skills of football players by testing their accuracy and ability to make successful free kicks from varying distances. The Players have the liberty of choosing their approach which could be from different parts of the field. Points are awarded based on the number of attempts (maximum of 3) it takes to score a goal. In December 2004, the first Free Kick Masters event was held in Marbella, Spain and lasted for two days. The event was not held in 2005 and 2006 due to organizational challenges.
On April 26, 2007, at a news conference in Barcelona, Spain, the organizers of the event announced that the competition was scheduled to take place and that former world footballer Ronaldinho (Ronaldo de Assis Moreira) of Brazil would be one of the participants. Everyone was quite elated about this. Free Kick Master 2007 was later scheduled to take place on December 22, 2007 at Houston, Texas, USA. Unfortunately, the event was again postponed due to organizational issues and has been rescheduled to hold on Saturday, July 5, 2008 at the same stadium in Texas, Reliant Stadium. The last Free Kick event was a sold out event. A total of about 30 countries and 110 million viewers were recorded for the event. The player that is eventually crowned “Free Kick Master” receives $1 million in prize money, and the “Golden Goalkeeper” winner receives $500,000.
