Meet the Irish freestyle star who has schooled Fernando Torres' & Arjen Robben's kids, and competed around the world

Teaching tricks to Fernando Torres’ and Arjen Robben’s children and being flown to the Seychelles to perform in front of an Arab prince – this Irish sensation is proof that you don’t need to survive at the cutthroat elite level of the 11-a-side game to enjoy the finer trappings of a career in football.

Conor Reynolds is a four-time Irish Freestyle champion who, just months after a serious injury that left him in bed for 72 days, finished second in the 2021 World Freestyle Championships.

He is one of the best on the planet when it comes to performing tricks with and is highly sought after by brands – and princes – to showcase his mind-blowing skills.

This past week he was brought to Leipzig in Germany by Red Bull, who videoed the Galway native at various landmarks around the city and at RB Leipzig’s state-of-the-art academy, just next to their 47,000-capacity Red Bull Arena.

Reynolds also took in the Champions League last-16 clash with Real Madrid.

Not bad for a football-mad former Cregmore FC player who just happened one day to stumble upon the world of freestyle football while scrolling through YouTube.

Explaining how he got started, Reynolds told the Irish Daily Star: “I was taking free kicks and putting them on YouTube, and I saw another free kick taker who also could do some skills.

“I was injured and I stopped playing for some months, so in my back garden I was just messing with the ball, trying a trick called Around The World, and it just went from there.

“It just sucked me in. Once I got the first trick I was really happy to try something different.”

Conor Reynolds

By the age of 15, Reynolds gave up 11-a-side football to focus solely on freestyling, spending hours on end trying out different tricks and techniques.

It wasn’t long before his talents earned him his first paycheque.

“I got my first show two years into doing freestyle; it was for Coca-Cola on St Patrick’s Day in Ballina in Mayo, and I got €500 for the job,” he said.

“I was 16 or 17 at the time and I just remember I thought it was so cool, I was buzzing that I got paid.

“I started getting a few more jobs, and I started placing higher in competitions, so people would find out about me.

“After I finished up in college I said, right, I’ve done my education, am I going to go down the event management road straight away or see what happens with freestyle?

“I went down the freestyle route because you are only young once.

“I won my first competition, the Irish Championships, in 2017 and I think that’s when all the brands started to come in for me.

“I’ve won it four times. It was never a plan. It just all fell together over the years. But it wasn’t until after college that I fully went for it.”

Irish Freestyle Footballer Conor Reynolds in Leipzig

Reynolds’ rise in the world of freestyle football can only be described as meteoric.

“I went to the Seychelles in 2017 to do a show for an Arab prince. They flew me in for 48 hours. So it was 24 hours’ travel, 48 hours there and 24 hours home again,” he said.

“That was pretty amazing. That was the furthest away I’d been.

“Last year I was in the Maldives for three weeks performing for the Four Seasons, teaching kids tricks. I taught Fernando Torres’ kid and Arjen Robben’s kid.

“They were both over there at the time. They are such nice people. I’d be walking around and Arjen Robben might be jogging by and he’d say ‘hi’.

“He came up to me on New Year’s Eve and shook my hand and my girlfriend’s hand, and wished us a happy New Year. It was pretty surreal.

“I’ve been to America – Miami – with Red Bull, because I won the Irish Red Bull Street Style competition. I’ve been to 31 countries so far and I’d say 20 of them are because of freestyle.

Conor Reynolds of Ireland poses for a portrait prior to the Red Bull Street Style World Final in Miami in 2019

“I’ve competed in Worlds, Nationals, Europeans and random tournaments, competitions across the world that might be organised by a freestyler in another country.”

To stay on top of his game, Reynolds puts in hours’ of training every day – and that takes its toll.

He has suffered plenty of injuries, with the most serious one occurring early in Covid.

“You are constantly jumping, doing small little jumps. You can also stretch your body and manipulate your ankles to control the ball better,” he explained.

“Over time, what it does to the hips, knees and ankles isn’t very good. There is a lot of wear and tear.

“Two months into doing freestyle I stood on the ball, fell back and broke my wrist. It was such a clean break that the bone overlapped. They pulled it back and it went out again.

“I tore ligaments and tendons in my ankle and four months later, this was during Covid, when I had the surgery they realised I broke a bone as well.

“It was May 2020 and my ankle was already hanging by a thread. I just tried to lift my leg up doing a trick and I had this excruciating pain.

“Four months later they did major surgery (at St Vincent’s Hospital in Dublin) and they put a metal bracket into my ankle.

“I was in bed for 72 days. I put on 10 kilos and I was quite depressed, lying in bed for that long.

“I had to learn how to walk again and only started walking in January, and by March or April I had lost 16 kilos.

“That involved a lot of physio and I can’t thank my physio, Alan Daly from just outside Claregalway, enough. Over the years he has helped me and kept me motivated.

“I think it was in my head a lot, that this was me done, that I wouldn’t get back to my level.

“There is a lot going on in your head and he helped me in that, as well as the physical recovery side of it.

“I trained every single day and in August I came second in the world in Prague, in the World Championships.

“From learning to walk to coming second was an eight-month period and that was pretty amazing, because I beat previous world champions who had won in 2017 and 2018.”

Recently, as he added more tricks to his repertoire, he hyperextended his elbow while doing a handstand.

“It’s very demanding on the body when you get to a certain level,” Reynolds added.

Born in Manchester, to a Mayo dad and a Dutch mother, Reynolds moved to Turloughmore in Galway when he was very young.

Looking to the future, he said: “I want to get my fifth Irish title. I like the number five. I don’t like four or six. If I had six, I’d need to go for 10!

“I just want to stop at five and be happy with that. So one more year of the nationals, hopefully.

“I have also organised competitions over the years in England and I have judged the World finals four times.

“So once I’m done with the competing aspect I’ll go down the business route, working with brands more and judging and organising, trying to give back to the freestyle community.”

# You can check out Conor Reynolds on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook and TikTok.

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