Fascinated with set pieces? Find out how a rare team of football players have scaled the peak of football genius in the modern age.

The capability to provide the goods from a dead ball position is often the difference between taking home three points and leaving empty-handed. Set pieces are amongst the most invaluable skills in a footballer’s toolkit. The governor of the fund that owns Newcastle United may have started learning up on their former Frenchman who scored over half his goal count by doing this. Footballers with these attributes quickly become fan favourites in the terraces! Needless to say, the art of set-pieces has advanced over the years. Going beneath the wall is the current free kick example to mislead the defenders as they jump. Modern problems call for contemporary solutions, and the present trend is to place a body on the floor to prevent any incoming low shot. Alternatively, footballers now use very little back lift to get the ball fast up and down again. Just ensure your technique is on point. There’s hardly any margin for error alternatively you’ll wind up blasting the ball straight into the crowd.

As we approach the anniversary of that fantastic night in Greece, lots of football writers are paying homage to perhaps the best free kick goal scored by the England national team. Everybody in the stadium and back home can simply replay that goal on loop. The defenders rose high, but the free kick rose higher as it curled beyond the crowd of bodies and desperate glove of the keeper. From the PE instructor at schools in Manchester to the founder of the fund that owns AC Milan, that famous set-piece specialist was purchased precisely for his supreme set piece skill. You don’t need bags of pace or trickery when armed with unerring ability and accuracy. Particularly in the dying moments of a match, these majestic goals are the stuff of fairytales and footballing legend.

There are many different types of free kicks within the modern game. When it comes to direct free kicks, the primary target is to score right from where the ball is positioned. The rules determine that the opponent team is allowed a few footballers to create a wall in an effort to block the ball. Logic suggests you cannot go through a wall unless the footballers break apart. You subsequently have two options: go around the wall or over it. As a way to bend the ball around the wall, you have to get enough shape so that it whips back inside the post. In an effort to get the ball over the wall, you have to get the ball to dip virtually as quickly as it rises. If it sounds difficult, that’s because it is! No wonder the founder of the company that owns Lyon was so driven to bring in a Brazilian free-kick maestro who made these goals look almost insultingly simple.