Teqball World Cup: Natalia Guitler learned the sport from Ronaldinho, and world football stars are on the bandwagon too
HERE is the latest craze that’s sweeping across the football world.
In Lionel Messi’s back garden, at Premier League clubs and in Brazil training sessions, Teqball tables are popping up everywhere.
Chelsea stars Eden Hazard, Alvaro Morata and Jorginho are some of the latest pros to be seen putting their skills to the test on what is best described as a football ping pong table.
Natalia Guitler, who represented Brazil at the Teqball World Cup in Reims, France over the weekend, learned about the sport after playing with a friend who also happens to be one of the country’s best ever footballers.
Guitler, 31, is a professional foot-volley player and Puma sponsored athlete with over 200,000 Instagram followers.
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She told SunSport: “I played for the first time at Ronaldinho’s house and I loved the game.
“I began to play a bit more and now I’m here.
“I still play with him. He is travelling a lot of the time but when he is in Rio we play.
“We used to play more foot volley but now I ask him to play more Teqball and not foot volley.
“It helps a lot with my foot volley career when it comes to getting the ball higher with the first touch.”
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Chelsea, Manchester City and Bournemouth are just a few of the professional teams to have a Teqball table at their training ground.
Gabriel Jesus, Dani Alves, Neymar and Philippe Coutinho were also pictured having a game during a Brazil training session at the World Cup this summer.
Arsenal great Robert Pires is an ambassador for Teqball, as is ex-Chelsea, Arsenal and Tottenham defender William Gallas.
Pires said: “Teqball is not only a great training aid for footballers, but a very entertaining sport in itself.
“It can help with your vision, your concentration and developing your all-round skills in football as you can use all different parts of your body.”
What looks like a light-hearted game of table tennis mixed with keepy uppys is actually one of the world’s newest and fastest growing sports.
Teqball hosted it’s second World Cup over the weekend in Reims, France with 42 nations participating and a prize fund of £76,000 up for grabs.
This year’s tournament was more than double the size of the inaugural event in Hungary in 2017.
Bogdan Marojevic and Nikola Mitro clinched the doubles title for Montenegro with victory over Hungary in the final.
Teqball was officially recognised as a sport by the Olympic Council of Asia in August and will be part of the programme at the 2022 Asian Games.
Organisers hold high hopes that it could one day be seen in the Olympics.
Perhaps Ronaldinho could pull on the Brazil colours once more and play alongside Guitler.
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