So is Street Football a Team Sport or What?

By now we can all agree that Street Football has decided on its main-stay 3v3 team format, which is an important decision which impacts the sport at all levels, however for this article I want to focus on one EXTREMELY important aspect; how this impacts the ranking system of the sport.

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The Ranking System

In talks with ISFA (International Street Football Association) I have been made aware that the intention for Street Football is to have a year round circuit very similar to Tennis with tournaments running around the globe throughout the year with different expected tournament levels (Challenger, Masters, World Series), with ranking points attached. Teams in the Street Football bubble will compete in as many tournaments as they can in order to build up as many ranking points as possible, with theoretically the best teams ranking the highest.

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The Problem

This should be glaringly obvious by now, this only works if the teams stick together for a full calendar year, and if rosters are approved by ISFA at the start of the year (allowing for a sub or two who aren't tied to another team), with transfer windows allocated. Why? Because if you have players jumping from team to team like they currently do, who's getting the ranking points, which team gets it? This has the potential to completely unravel the professional aspect of the sport. To tie it back to the title, I have to ask if Street Football is a Team Sport or not? This is due to the way the ranking system needs to be built, if we want a robust ranking system players need to be yearly locked into a team, with teams registering to ISFA, and if that isn't a priority, then Street Football will have an extremely broken ranking system which will reward gaming the system instead of ranking highly due to merit. The second solution to ranking (which I pray to God they don't use) is to rank the players individually and split ranking points achieved by each team by the players within it after each tournament, meaning players are free to jump around from team to team like it's nothing. If you don't understand why this is a bad idea, I'll make it really simple, it will reward players who are the most morally corrupt. Hear me out, let's say you're ranked as the 2nd best Street Footballer in the world and one of your closest friends (who may or may not be ranked highly) has teamed up with the 3rd ranked player for this particular tournament, your friend can deliberately tank the tournament to ensure that 3rd placed player isn't able to overtake you and falls further behind. It's really simple, THIS IS A STUPID WAY TO RANK STREET FOOTBALL.

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Solution

Lock teams in for the year. All teams have a roster with a set amount of players they can choose from, but all players must not be allowed to enter tournaments under any other team. Allow transfer windows, and rank teams as teams, not as individuals.