(1888PressRelease)
November 19, 2007 - We have had the cricketer Mark Ramprakash and ruby player Kyran Bracken win celebrity dance competitions. Now is there a chance for a footballer to win?
The Strickly Come Dancing judges and the audience were blown away by John and Nicoles rhythmic salsa performance.
John joined the program to loose weight and he seems to be slimmer every week that he appears on the show. In the 1980s and 90s John was a role model for many English footballers, he earned 79 England caps and was placed in the English Football Hall of Fame in 2005. Could his salsa dance performance attract footballers to go salsa crazy or mambo mad? When you have a football star dancing so well and learning to dance so quickly, there may be hope for other footballers who think they have 2 left feet. Dance has always had a stigma attached to it that only girls or really effeminate men do it. It doesn’t seem to appeal to the macho image of football.
However few people would call John Barnes effeminate. Some people think of partner dancing as an easy way to meet someone and introduce yourself, it is! Men revert to the school disco mentality where there is an incredible pressure put on them to ask a girl to have the last dance, a kiss and a cuddle and perhaps ask for the girls telephone number. Now we have 100s of salsa and ballroom dance clubs where people go not necessarily dancing to find love but because they love to dance. For many years sports men have used dancing such as ballet to improve their balance and coordination. Could footballers use salsa dancing to improve their rhythm. The Brazilian footballer Ronaldino has just as much flair and grace on the dance floor as he has on the football pitch. His movement is poetry in motion.
Dancing improves hand eye coordination, spatial awareness and multitasking ability. Dancing with a partner in salsa or ballroom involves thinking about many things at the same time and reacting quickly to the music. In the same way football involves tackling the person in front of you at the same time as thinking about to whom you will pass the ball. Good footballers don't always make good dancers, of which Peter Crouch is proof. Great foot balling nations also have their national dances; Brazil have samba, Argentina have Tango and England ... have Morris dancing! The same way athletes use weight training to improve their speed maybe salsa or ballroom dancing lessons will give English footballers the rhythm and coordination of some of the great footballers of the 80s and 90s like John Barnes.
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