The freestyle football skills of Helsinki resident Lubna Omar have attracted thousands of followers on social media, and the 18-year-old high school student hopes her success will inspire other Muslim women to follow their dreams.
Freestyle football is a combination of football tricks, dance, acrobatics and music, and Omar's seemingly effortless mastery of the art earned her a place at the Freestyle Unlocked Africa Competition last year.
Omar — who speaks Arabic as her mother tongue — represented Sudan and finished in second place in the tightly contested female category of the continent-wide competition.
The silver medal was the culmination of years of training that began when Omar first discovered the freestyle branch of the sport while playing for Porvoo-based FC Futura, when a team of freestyle footballers performed their skills at one of the team's annual events.
"Immediately after that, I started following lots of freestylers on social media. In football, we are part of a team, but freestyle is all about the individual. There is no coach to force me to train, which suits me," she laughs.
Now living in Vuosaari, Helsinki, Omar currently plays her club football with FC Kontu but still finds time to hone her freestyle skills, much to the delight of her thousands of Instagram and TikTok followers.
'Around the world'
According to the World Freestyle Football Association (WFFA), the sport's umbrella organisation, it is impossible to determine exactly how or when freestyle football began.
However, games that have many similarities — such as Chinlone and Sepak Takraw — are believed to have been played in southern and southeast Asia some 2,000 years ago.
World-famous circus artists Enrico Rastelli and Francis Brunn were also known to perform with footballs as part of their acts during the early part of the last century, including tricks that are now known as the 'Neck Stall' and the 'Around The World'.
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But the sport's real breakthrough came in the 1990s, when Brazilian footballing icon Ronaldinho demonstrated his football juggling skills alongside freestyle pioneer Mr. Woo in TV adverts for US sports equipment giant Nike.
Around the same time, street performers began posting their videos to the internet, and more and more young people were attracted to the sport. The advent of social media has taken exposure to and popularity of the sport to an entirely new level.
Omar told Yle she hopes that her story will motivate others and show everyone they can play the sport, regardless of religion or gender.
"If the motivation is right, nothing can stand in the way," she said.