2021 Balloon World Cup

Ibai was inspired to organize the tournament by a video of American siblings Antonio, Diego and Isabel Arredondo playing a game of keep-up with a balloon in their Canby, Oregon home,[6] which Ibai tweeted with the caption "I want to buy the rights to this and set up a World Cup."[7] Antonio and Diego attended the tournament in Spain to represent the United States, but Diego was eliminated early after a first-round loss to Cuba's Eric Guzmán González.[1]

Llanos enlisted several panelists of Spanish sports talk show El chiringuito de Jugones for the event's staff, including former La Liga assistant referee Rafa Guerrero as one of the referees for the tournament's matches, and Alfredo Duro, Jorge D'Alessandro and Ander Cortés as commentators.[2]

• Matches would last for 2 minutes, except for the final, which would last 5 minutes.
• Players had to touch the balloon with their hands, launching it upwards.
• Players could only touch the balloon once before their opponent touched it.
• A player is awarded a point when their opponent fails to touch the balloon before it hits the ground.
• The player who has scored the most points when time runs out wins the match.
• If the two players are tied when time runs out, they go to an overtime where they must use their head and feet instead of the hands to touch the balloon; the first player to score a point wins the match.

In spite of the championship having initially been announced as a 24-country tournament with a group stage that would ensure every participant played at least two matches, this was abandoned when the field was expanded to 32 participants, opting instead for a single knockout tournament. All matches were played inside a glass cage that contained a number of pieces of furniture acting as obstacles, and simulating the home environment in which the keep-up game is usually played.

All of the competitors were announced as the representatives of their country.[8]

Competitor	Country
Walid Seddiki	Algeria
Ramon Cierco	Andorra
Elián Barrado	Argentina
Gor Khechoyan	Armenia
Israel Quispe	Bolivia
Diego Mendez	Brazil
Tsetevan Mladenov	Bulgaria
Felipe Pávez	Chile
Funtxi Ursua Zhang	China
Tarik	Colombia
Eric Guzmán González	Cuba
Matías Boho	Equatorial Guinea
Pol Jorquera	France
Tamaz Tsagareishvili	Georgia
Jan Spiess	Germany
Momo Benavides	Italy
Luis "Pollo" Forzan	Mexico
Gerelt-Od Tserennorov	Mongolia
Yahya El Hajouji	Morocco
Javi Damas	Netherlands
Raúl Eduardo Giménez	Paraguay
Francesco de la Cruz	Peru
Ricardo Ferreira	Portugal
Yana Rudenko	Russia
Pape Ndour	Senegal
Jan Franquesa	Spain
Nicklas Hallback	Sweden
Andrii Mostavchuk	Ukraine
Moses Duckrell	United Kingdom
Diego Arredondo	United States
Isaac "Suko" Leal	Uruguay
Raúl David Carrero	Venezuela

Replaced competitors

Name	Country	Reason for replacement	Substitute
Marco Fiorillo	Italy	Tested positive for COVID-19 prior to the event	Gerónimo "Momo" Benavides

After Francesco de la Cruz won the tournament, he was congratulated on social media by President of Peru Pedro Castillo.[9]