If you don’t know what the sport of Panna is, I'll break it down for you… This sport focuses on 1 5 minute long 1v1 football match where opponent are usually enclosed in a cage of sorts, the winner of the match is the person with most goals by the end of the 5 minutes, or immediate victory is awarded for deliberately kicking the ball cleanly through your opponents legs, this is an automatic victory no matter the scoreline.
Panna is a very popular Sport in Scandinavia and Eastern Europe, where most major federations, tournaments and teams are located. As of writing this post, the forerunner in the sport of Panna is the PannaHouse collective which is based out of Copenhagen, Denmark. This group holds the biggest tournament which draws players from all over the world to watch and participate in their invitation only tournament, and believe me you need to be seriously skilled in order to make the cut. The events they hold are very well put together, they hold great esteem worldwide in the street football community and are seen as the place to reach if you are trying to attain the upper echelons of the sport.
This is all great for the sport, but it isn’t all forward progress as I believe Panna has a very serious ceiling issue. Panna has existed in its current form for around a decade now, and apart from PannaHouse and maybe PannaK.O or Ghetto Games, no collectives in the scene have grown. A few individuals have, which is great, but nowhere near to a substantial amount that will prop up a sport. Federations and Collectives like PannaPro from Russia and Street Heroes from Belgium/France are a great example of the sport not having a broad enough appeal to support a tournament or league structure with more than one or two main events, as PannaPro and Street Heroes were at one time major names in the scene, but both fell to obscurity while still operating, showing that it wasn’t due to a lack of work that they fell apart. To put it simply the scene is too small at this current time for any growth to occur.
Now let's say that this wasn’t an issue at all, let’s for the sake of this “article” pretend that the sport of Panna had the numbers to realistically hold up a Worldwide circuit, or at least a European one, and let’s discuss the issues that are truly holding Panna back. The most obvious issue, Panna is boring from a viewer's perspective! Before you get too mad and find a way to lash out at me, hear me out: I played panna religiously in my teenage years. I watched it on Youtube and Instagram, so as a result I played it as much as I could, granted I played against my cousins, teammates, or even my dad due to the lack of interest in the sport in Rural Australia, regardless I believe Panna is a huge reason for my growth in Football as it teaches you quick feet, thinking on the spot, and creativity. Meaning I love Panna as a Sport, I even won Australia's one and only Panna Tournament, and I truly hope it succeeds, but you do need to point out the errors in order to fix it. So to get back to my point, Panna is fun to play and boring to watch. Think about it, you have 2 players facing each other while one person slowly does tricks with the ball and the other player stands back watching and waiting for an error while holding their legs together, it’s not the most riveting sport if you ask me from a viewers perspective. To add to the pain, a Panna usually happens in the blink of an eye, most people miss it or question it and then the games are over. The payoff after waiting minutes for a result that takes less than a second leaves you feeling flat. Not to mention that when a player rounds the other to score a goal, usually there is no contest due to a fear of immediately being Panna’d, so the intensity is awful. I’m not trying to bash the sport, but when something isn’t fun to watch from a neutral audience then it won’t catch on outside of the community. It’s different to say that the athletes that compete love to watch Panna matches and tournaments, I know they do, I do as well, but that’s what will keep the sport as a niche sport.
If overall the scene is happy to stay small then there’s no issue, but that would be a shame. In terms of what to add to the sport to fix it…. Honestly I’m not too sure, at the very least goals should matter a whole lot more than they do. Maybe a Panna could be equal to 2 goals, but the match doesn’t end until the timer ends, so matches can have more than one hype moment, attacking is encouraged, players are discouraged from just standing back, and on top of that you’ll get to see some defensive plays. I’ll leave it at that, I hope that Panna is able to be a top tier sport many years in the Future, but in its current form it will always be a small Sport played in Northern Europe.
