Still No ISFA World Tour... What's Going On?

It's almost March, that's a scary thought. It feels like 2025 began only yesterday. Even scarier is the prospect of ISFA following the same route as all Street Football "Professionalisations" in the past, which is essentially promising the world, delivering very little, then failure.

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This is Serious!

December 2024, I personally met with one of the board members from ISFA. For those who don't know there are 6 board members who collectively drive the sport, making the major decisions. I met with the face of ISFA over two separate google meet calls, where we discussed where the sport of 3v3 Street Football was headed, I was presented a deck, and I was given a confident assurance that I'd have all details by early January as to the exact details for the coming year. My task was to look at the proposed events, present them to my team, and create our own plan as to which events we'll be heading to. Which we did, sending back a list of 5-6 events we'd be heading to. Slight issue though, early January came and went with no update. Messages were ignored when I asked for updates, and no tangible updates had been given on their social media. Eventually I did hear back.... in February. I was told that they had to delay the launch of the 2025 details until February 16th, however they did promise a huge announcement before then. Would you believe it, nothing happened. The website they promised by February 16th.... still not up (as of the date of article publishing), no details, no registration platforms, no calendar, absolutely zero communication. This isn't good. To make it worse, there are teams who wish to be a part of the ecosystem that ISFA are straight up ignoring. To me this smells of a friendship group just doing whatever suits them, with very little foresight into the growth of the sport.

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What They Delivered

I mentioned that ISFA promised an announcement. It did eventually come, and it was nothing special, contrary to their messaging. They announced a small 3v3 Challenger Series event in Alexandria, Egypt. This sounds awesome right? And in practice it is, until you dive a little deeper. This 3v3 event is being run by an Egyptian team, in Egypt. All ISFA is doing is adding their logo, maybe posting some of the footage, and allowing you to DM them to participate (talk about unprofessional). One of my major issues with ISFA is that they offer very little to help your events, but will take full credit for it, adding their logo and posting it on their socials (if you give them good enough footage). How do I know? This is what they unknowingly pitched to me in those two December meetings. I have since hosted a 3v3 event, and am hosting a second within a week of this article going out. For the first event I made ISFA aware well in advanced, I actually told them that I'd be hosting an event a month in 2025. All they seemed interested in was being able to use those events to show that they have events all over the world. Read that again, they want to use my events to push their federation in their presentations as proof they've grown the sport. I'm doing these events more for myself and the Sydney scene or even Ronaldinho Global Street League well before they are for ISFA, so that doesn't sit well with me at all.

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Time to Panic?

Not yet, not yet. Don't go crazy. This isn't the time to lose all hope, and I don't say this for ISFA's sake. I have very low faith in what they're bringing to the table at this point, but don't let their disorganisation ruin 3v3 for you. All this shows is that there is a problem at ISFA that has to be addressed. Is this for individual social media accolades, because that's what it looks like. Half of the board have no business experience and are too busy focussing on their own social media success to grow a sport from the ground up. Plastering ISFA on other peoples hard work will only work for so long, maybe once they stop daily posting about the event they hosted in November 2024 they'll wake up and see it for what it is, which at this stage is an empty and unfulfilled promise.

I hope I'm wrong, and I hope for the best for 3v3.