Liv Cooke is in a league of her own

Liv Cooke has the CV of a seventy-year-old. She’s accomplished more in 25 years than it takes most a lifetime. At the age of 17, she became the freestyle football world champion of the world. She’d competed the year before only to break her foot in the finals. She came back with a vengeance and took the title. She was the youngest person to ever do it.

The thing about playing in a league of your own is that no one can prepare you for it. No one tells you about the moment after you achieve all your dreams. Cooke woke up and it was just a regular Monday. People went to work, and the world kept moving. Cooke no longer knew her reason for waking up.

It took time to find a new path, to set her sights on the next horizon. It was her work with UEFA that eventually showed her the way. She started creating content, being a role model for young girls in sport, and got to see real impact from her presence. Now she knows how to handle herself after her achievements: onto the next.

We sat down with the young freestyle football star and entrepreneur about her journey so far, why the best moment in her life was followed by the hardest, and how the skills she learned in freestyle are the skills that make her millions.

Square Mile: You grew up in the North of England with two brothers - what did day to day life look like growing up in your house?

Liv Cooke: Chaos. Absolute chaos. I was the youngest sibling, only girl. I was absolutely dad’s princess. My brothers were typical lads always out and about playing sports. We lived in a cul de sac. Every moment I had to spare I was out on the streets playing. We didn’t have a net or anything, it was just empty street. We’d chuck hoodies on the ground and use them as goal posts. Those are my fondest memories of growing up. I fell in love with that. When I was ten, my dad took me to my first football team. I cannot remember a day in my life when I did not play football.

SM: Was there a history of football players in your family or were you just fans?

LC: It’s a funny story actually - so my grandad was about to sign with Man United. They were offering him a contract, and if he had accepted it, he would have been on the plane that crashed. The reason he rejected it is because his agent told him he’d be benched during the season and never play. So he signed to Preston North End so he would have playing time. If he hadn’t, he would have died on that plane.

SM: That’s some divine intervention.

LC: Yes.

SM: Did you ever consider playing another sport - or was it always football?

LC: I loved sport. But football was the only one I was obsessed with. It was all I really loved.

SM: Do you think you can identify what it was about football that stood out from everything else?

LC: When I play football, I go into a state of flow. I never want it to end. I forget how long I’ve been doing it for when I’m in it. When I was younger especially, I could have just played all day. I remember so many times during matches I’d ask the ref, ‘how much is left’ and he’d say ‘only a few more minutes’, and I’d be gutted. I never wanted it to end. I didn’t have that feeling with other sports. The whole world just stops. The only thing I think about is winning.

SM: So you were a natural talent as a kid - did your family want you to go pro?

LC: My family was never bothered about status. They just supported what I enjoyed. All I wanted to do was play football. When I was younger, there wasn’t a career path. People weren’t making a living. I remember Kelly Smith was playing for England at the time, and there were rumours she was homeless. How is the best female player our country has ever seen, homeless? But it never went through my mind. It was just obsession. It was all I wanted.

I did the steps to get there. I was playing with the lionesses you see today. We were the best team in the country if you asked me. I was on track. But when I was fifteen or sixteen, we were in practice doing shuttle drills where you punt and turn and change directions quite a lot - I remember I planted my right foot to change directions and I felt this shock of pain go through my whole body and into the ground. I fell to the floor in absolute agony. That’s when I picked up my back injury. I was out for seven months.

SM: What did you do in that time period you couldn’t play?

LC: My whole life, I’d never been a day without sport, never mind seven months. I was still obsessed. I couldn’t sit home and do nothing. So I’d play with the football in ways that didn’t hurt my back. I just wanted to keep the touch. I would sit in my backyard and try to find ways to move the ball without hurting myself. That’s when I discovered the world of freestyle, and that’s when my dreams started changing. All I could think about was tricks. I still wanted to be a pro footballer, but now I always wanted to be a freestyle world champion. I tried to do both, but it was shattering my body. So I had to make a choice: football or freestyle. My parents told me football because they couldn’t see the dream. Sometimes parents advise you on your career but they don’t always know what’s best because they’re not you. If I had listened to them, I never would have made it here.

SM: Do you think you preferred freestyle for the solo aspect of it?

LC: As somebody as obsessed as me, it’s easier to dive in when you have that control. But not in terms of execution. At the end of the day, there’s going to be times when you are shattered. Where things aren’t working and you don’t know why. A team environment will pick you up, your coaches will force you to train. When you’re alone you might land a new trick and get a mini win but there’s no team celebration. There’s no one clapping for you. You have to learn to clap for yourself. That’s what can get hard, day in and day out.

SM: The recovery time period - was it a lot of back and forth with the injury - when were you in the clear?

LC: I went to so many specialists over the course of multiple years to find out what was going on with my back. Ultimately, we never got anywhere. I had a lot of stress on my body at such a young age. The plains of movement that your back do in freestyle are abnormal, at least that’s what they told me. They said I had to stop, or it was going to get worse. I was like, well I can’t stop. It’s not a decision. I’m not choosing to do this. I’m obsessed. I found that if I changed direction quickly it would flare me up. I could do it. I could train for hours but then I’d wake up the next day and not be able to get out of bed. I had to learn what worked and what didn’t. It took time.

SM: Do you think that you’ve learned to do the tricks in a different way because of that injury?

LC: I think I see the tricks differently. That’s why I’ve had the fastest rise in the sport. Freestyle is all trial and error. You try a thousand times, and you land it once. Then you do it another thousand times to get consistent at it. I had a good ability to decipher what went wrong in the attempt. To be honest, I was just more obsessed. I wanted it more than anyone.

I was invited to judge the RedBull competitions recently. I was speaking with my friend Kitty, a fellow freestyle world champion. We were watching some of the athletes warm up and I was thinking: some of these athletes started before me. They’ve been doing this for decades. How do they still have the passion to compete? After I won, it went for me. I didn’t enjoy it anymore and Kitty said she felt the same.

I turned to her and said: ‘look at them, they love it, they love competing.’ and she said, ‘yeah but none of them win.’ That stuck with me. That’s true. Most people that achieve something so significant so quickly - they don’t actually enjoy it. They’re stressful. Winning isn’t a success, it’s a relief. Finally, I can breathe again. I can see the sky again. It’s a bizarre feeling.

SM: Is that how you felt after you won the world title?

LC: Yes and to be honest I rarely spoke about the feeling. It was only when I spoke to Kitty that I started to realise. I adored freestyle for many years. I came second in a world championship and broke my foot in the final. That’s when it shifted for me. Next year I’m winning, next year I’ll be the champion - the youngest in history. I went all in. I spent six years a day training and then went home to mentally prepare. I was dreaming of it. Was that healthy? I don’t think so. Was that sustainable? No. I didn’t enjoy training anymore. I wasn’t doing it because I loved it, I was out to get my title. I lost the passion. Then when I achieved it yes, it was a buzz like you wouldn’t believe. But shortly after it was bizarre. I got feelings I never had before.

SM: Can you speak more on that? What were the after effects?

LC: I am a very happy person. I think I’ve only been sad once in my life and it was the moment after I achieved my dream. I won the competition, there was the after party. It was all congrats and celebration. I woke up on the Monday morning and everyone went to work. Then it was like…what now? I used to jump out of bed to train and dead excited. I got the fire in my belly. It’s natural and I want to do it. I woke up that and felt empty. I stayed in bed. It must have been about 11 am when my brother came in and was like ‘are you alright?’ and I said ‘whats the point?’ I wasn’t looking for sympathy. I really just wondered what was the point? I planned everything so perfectly to become the champion. I never planned anything after. I wished I didn’t win. I wanted the feeling of wanting something again. There was no money from winning the world championships, I didn’t have a career. But I had my title and that’s all I wanted. I felt like I had completed my life. You have to start again. ( I cried in my car)

SM: You said that football put you in the flow state - when did that change?

LC: There’s phases to freestyle. The first phase is you learn a trick and that could take three months. Then phase two is solidifying that, staying consistent. It’s just repetition, repetition, repetition. You drill it one thousand times until you’re tired. Then you drill it another thousand times to make sure you can land it when you’re tired. I loved phase one. I loved learning and pushing myself. That’s the flow state. Then phase two is just drilling everything. It was so boring, so tiring, and so lonely. I never enjoyed any of that.

SM: If you could re-do the time period in any way, or make it sustainable, what would you change?

LC: I wouldn’t change a thing. Everything happened for a reason, everything happened in it’s perfect timing. I set out on a mission and achieved it. If I hadn’t of lost that passion, I would have stayed competing. I never would have done all my work with UEFA, or my social media content, or my property business now. Everything happened at the right time. That’s why now when something shit happens I know it’s either to teach me something, or redirect me. And I’m cool with that.

SM: After all of this happened, what was your first re-direction?

LC: I didn’t understand it at first but I got an email a week after the championships from the head of women’s football at UEFA. She said, ‘hey, do you want to come to Switzerland and film an advert for us on the highest football pitch in Europe?’ I was like absolutely yes. We ended up doing a lot together. I signed with the team for many years. It didn’t fix my problem but it helped mask it.

I went from so much structure to nothing to do. That’s the real problem. When I went off with UEFA, I had a schedule. I needed that. I don’t know what I would have done without that. But then more than that was purpose. We were inspiring young girls across the world. That was piecing me back together again.

SM: That’s fascinating to me because you created your own structure with freestyle.

LC: When I had a goal - that’s the difference. I can be the most disciplined person in the world when I know what I want because I reverse engineer the process to get there. I had no goals anymore. It’s a dangerous thing to be seventeen years old and have everything you ever wanted. That’s weird. I wasn’t rich or anything. I had no steady income. But I had the world title.

I started going away with UEFA for a few weeks and then I’d have a few weeks at home. Every time I got home I was lost again. It wasn’t a solution, it was just getting me by temporarily. It really took a long time for me to actually want things again. I’m certain that came through UEFA because the content we were creating was affecting people. I wanted to do more. I wanted to make more videos, get more views, help more people. Slowly, my obsession changed. I re-honed it into content. Then I had goals again.

SM: Now what do you do when you achieve things?

LC: Onto the next. Sure I can celebrate and toast to a win. But the enjoyment is not in the celebration. I don’t enjoy that part. I enjoy the process. I get back in it, I’m learning again. I don’t get consumed anymore to a healthy amount. I’m back in the flow. I’m enjoying the learning. We’re ticking things off and we’re climbing.

SM: Today, what are the things that are giving you that flow feeling?

LC: My property business. People always look at property developers with a negative viewpoint and call them capitalists and this and that. My approach to property is just like my approach to freestyle football. The same skills and mindset that won me world titles are now making me ten’s of millions.

I’m a big believer that if something sparks your interest, go do it. Thats where passions develop. It’s not going to hit you in the face, you’ve got to find it. I have short bursts with these things. I wanted to learn all these tricks. I learned all of them. There’s only two things that I’ve become obsessed with. The first was freestyle and the second was property. The feeling I get from seeing numbers in property deals is the same feeling I got when I used to see the judges scorecards. It’s the same. That’s how I know it’s for me.

SM: What made you a good freestyler has made you a good property developer - they’re transferable skills.

LC: Exactly that. The same skills and mindset that won me world titles are now making me ten’s of millions. There are two types of people that consume my content. The first type are people seeing me do well in property, they see me being honest about my mistakes and achievements, and they know where I’ve done from. They see me doing it and think if she can do it, so can I. The other people are the ones that look at it and say ‘oh that’s not fair’ and they give me shit. They blame the government, they blame landlords, they blame rich people for the fact that they’re sad, lonely, or broke. You can tell how someone receives the content if they’re going to be successful. By successful, I mean happy. Some of my happiest times I was broke as hell, kicking a ball around with a goal in mind. I think if people were more accountable, the world would be a happier place.