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A Newfangled angle
Three simple enough questions arise from this common enough scene. Why does the ball bend in the direction in which it is spinning? (For an answer, Google e.g., ‘the Magnus effect’ or ‘physicsworld.com/a/the-physics-of-football’.) The second question is based on simple geometry. If you’re trying to score a goal, why not aim for the nearest point so as to give the goalkeeper least time to save it? If you are in front of goal, with the keeper in the centre, there is no ‘nearest point’ of any real significance. If you are approaching from a wide angle, however, surely your first choice should be the near post area unless the route is blocked, and indeed some scorers do cut back to surprise and fool the keeper, especially along the ground. Flattened to deceive.
Furthermore, the ball to the far post has to be lifted higher and curled, aiming to score inside the corner of the net, increasing the time difference to each post (for a ball traveling at 50 m.p.h., about one second). Ironically, the greater the bend, and the higher the arc, the longer it takes to reach the goal, yet the less likely it is that the goalkeeper will save it.
The third question relates to my own, very limited, memory about the history of this technique. I don’t remember any player even trying to make this shot before the advent of overseas players, well into the Premiership era. Even then, I believe it is quite a rarity – I’ve not noticed it at all in women’s matches yet. So how long has it been in Liverpool’s game, and who can have a place in our hall of fame for this type of strike?
Surprisingly, this technique - or, rather, its target - appears to be relatively new. If we look at videos of matches from the last century, it is very rare to see any Liverpool player score, or even attempt to score, with this type of strike – one or two in every hundred goals if you’re lucky. However, curling the ball with the instep was not new, of course. (Newton explained the phenomenon in the seventeenth century, and the physics of it was first described by Heinrich Gustav Magnus in 1852!) There are plenty of earlier examples of free kicks and crosses from outside the box, curled in towards the penalty area where there would be men in red waiting to guide the ball into the net. Alternatively, it could be curled out, depriving the goalkeeper of a chance of catching it. It’s just another assist.
What seems to be a newfangled angle is the idea that such a strike might be deliberately curled directly into the net without the need for attackers waiting to pounce, making the keeper’s positional predicament even more difficult. However, it must take great skill plus many hours of practice to perfect the technique; exponents’ efforts are clearly not just speculative.
So, when can we see goals with the following criteria in Liverpool’s game?
1. Kicked from an angle of, say, less than 50 degrees from the goal line centred on the far post. (The corner of the penalty area is 35 degrees, the corner flag 0 degrees from which goals have been scored.)
2. The ball is airborne for all its journey, but I’ve included slight deflections which did not materially affect the result.
3. There is a curl put deliberately on the ball sending it in flight away from the goal at first. It is not a case of just lobbing the keeper.
4. Kicked from a minimum (arbitrary) distance of 20 yards from the far post.
In the absence of a name for this type of strike, perhaps we could call it a ‘magnus’.
Until 1977 I can find only one possible candidate for acclaim – Peter Thompson’s second goal against West Ham at Anfield on 7 January 1967. He flashed in his own rebound from the right area and to the right target, but the surviving black and white image and single camera angle in MOTD make a convincing assessment impossible. I suspect, however, that the speed of the ball renders it impossible to have the sort of trajectory we’re looking for. The faster it flies, the smaller the curve attainable from Thompson’s distance.
On 16 March, 1977, the headlines for the famous game against St Etienne belonged to Fairclough, but Keegan might already have made LFC history. With many spectators still queueing to get in after an early start, his strike on 102 seconds from well outside the area, nearer the left corner, is the earliest I can find which satisfies the four criteria. The swerve on the ball took it first away from goal for the onrushing Tommy Smith. With keeper Jurkovic in the centre of the goalmouth, it sailed over both and curled round into the Anfield Road net. Did Keegan try to lob the keeper, as David Lacey suggested? Was he really aiming a speculative shot for Smith to guide it in, as common practice would suggest? Was the goal a fluke, helped in by what Horace Yates enigmatically noted as a ‘friendly wind’?
Keegan scored only one other career goal even remotely like this, playing for Newcastle against Cardiff seven years later.
There being little mileage in trying to imitate a fluke, seasons go by without one until, that is, we were the victim of another early example. Norwich’s Justin Fashanu was given BBC ‘goal of the month’ for his left-foot, full volley equaliser from the right on 9 February 1980. It had just enough curl to keep it beyond the reach of Clemence who was already well positioned on the left side of the goal. Phil Thompson is quoted as saying it was the best goal he’d ever seen (the full volley having made the strike even more difficult), and if it really was that good, there was little point in lesser mortals trying to imitate it.
Until, that is, we have a superior mortal in the shape of Kenny Dalglish, whose two goals matching our description were among the ten contenders for BBC’s 1983/84 ‘Goal of the season’. Goal B was at Highbury on 10 September 1983, a left foot shot from the right to beat Pat Jennings who was, admittedly, standing on the right side of his goal. (Don’t believe everything you read in the press, by the way. According to Ronald Atkin, it was struck ‘with such ferocity that the ball rebounded from the stanchion almost clear of the penalty area’. No, it didn’t – it rebounded into the arms of an Arsenal defender next to the goal.)
Six weeks later at Portman Road, Dalglish scored Goal D, again on about 60 minutes, left footed from the right, from further out and from a narrower angle. Once more, the keeper was standing in exactly the wrong position, not expecting lightning to strike twice in the same season. Unusually, we have Dalglish’s own confirmation that it had been a genuine attempt to score, and not a misdirected cross. Fagan, with a surprisingly short memory, said he had not seen the like for 20 years. (Kenny thus celebrated his 100th goal for Liverpool, his wife Marina’s birthday and their wedding anniversary!)
You wait for seven more seasons for another such LFC goal, then two come along in 1990/91 with the John Barnes the hero, another supremely skillful performer. Yet Barnes’ shot on 1 September 1990 against the visitors, Aston Villa, hardly raised a comment in the papers, and the second (‘a shot of mouth-watering touch and precision’ Guardian) was almost hidden in an eight-goal FA cup replay thriller at Goodison on 20 February. At least writer Stephen Bierley bequeathed us the phrase ‘pearl of a curl’ to remember it by.
During the 1990’s there were several attempts which came close to reproducing the goods, but rarely satisfying the criteria – too straight a trajectory, or from too close to the D, for example, which keep Fowler and Owen from being in contention, and it wasn’t in Rush’s repertoire.
Redknapp’s place in the hall of fame, at Sheffield Wednesday on 11 May 1997, was unusual. It was the first from a free kick, the last goal of the season, and against Wednesday’s third keeper in the match (their forward Andy Booth – injury and a red card had seen off the first two). Free kicks have one obvious disadvantage, and one hidden advantage. They give the defence more time to get organised, compared with open play; but they give the striker more time to make sure the ball is dry, increasing the potential for swerve when it is struck.
Another such goal resulting from an LFC free kick was by Gary McAllister against Coventry on 28 April, 2001. McAllister is a master at deceiving a goalkeeper, and correctly believed that Coventry keeper Chris Kirkland was deliberately encouraging him to shoot left by standing on the right-hand end of the goal line. Sure enough, during the run-up, Kirkland can be seen moving left, allowing McAllister’s remarkably accurate free kick to hit the top right corner. Responding, Ron Atkinson wrote a whole article, with diagrams, advocating having a defender on the goal line when defending free kicks from a wide angle.
Outstanding among these pre-Coutinho goalscorers was Gerrard on 30 April 2005. The Middlesbrough keeper was standing forward of the middle of his goal as our captain approached the penalty area from the right, over twenty-five yards from the goal line. Alone among the goals so far, this was a curling rocket with the outside of his right foot into the top left corner. Amazing accuracy. (The technique, called a ‘trivela’, is supposed to have recently been invented by Ricardo Quaresma of Porto, the right foot hitting the bottom left side of the ball, making it curl to the right. Yet the famous Roberto Carlos goal in 1997 can have been scored only by a trivela using his left foot.)
Against Hull City (26 Sep 2009) Gerrard also performed a like-for-like repeat of the Keegan goal from 1977 – the commentator being of the firm opinion that this was no fluke.
Sturridge matched Gerrard’s Middlesbrough trivela, but with the outside of his left foot, in the Europa League final against Sevilla (18 May 2016) stunning the crowd in Basle. It was ‘a goal to grace any final. Any final. It came from the boot, or rather the outside of the boot, of Daniel Sturridge with the striker collecting possession from Philippe Coutinho and, with Mariano Ferreira backing off, he used the Sevilla defender as cover to bend the ball around him and into the corner of the net. The fingertips of goalkeeper David Soria brushed the ball as it went past him. It was some strike and Sturridge danced away in celebration.’ (Telegraph) ‘Sturridge’s opener was breathtakingly brilliant. Firmino and Adam Lallana both contributed to the moment, though by the time Sturridge received possession, there was still so much to do. The only gap to use required a perfect execution with the outside of a left boot and he was able to deliver it.’ (Independent)
While we’re on the subject, Lallana’s version of the trivela against Leicester (10 Sep 2016) became more of a rocket, still rising when it hit the back of the net.
Not to be outdone, Torres also got in on the act (28 March 2010) and into the hall of fame. From 16 yards up the left edge of the penalty area, with the Sunderland keeper logically placed close to the left-hand post, it must have been, for him, a relatively easy target, though (for the purist) helped by slight deflection invisible from the camera’s angle. Later that same year, a light in the Hodgson gloom came on 7 November when the Anfield Road end watched Torres skirt round Ivanovic, and bend one ‘lazily’ round and beyond Petr Cech who was obligingly stationed well out from the left end of the Chelsea goal.
I can find only one goal satisfying all four criteria, (against Cardiff 21 Dec 2013) by that terrific bender of a football Luis Suarez. He was probably too busy scoring from all other positions on the pitch to make this a regular occurrence, often preferring to drive the ball hard along the ground.
And then there was Coutinho, signing on for LFC on 30 January 2013. This strike became the trademark Coutinho goal for LFC, coming in from the left flank, (especially between the corner of the area and the D), opening up his body, and sending it high inside the far post. He did not bring the technique with him or, if he did, it lay hidden, like an unhatched golden egg, until February 2015. During those two years, whenever Coutinho was in a similar position, he had preferred to pass rather than shoot. On 26 March 2014, he had watched as Sturridge offered him a template from the right side with his left foot, curling one in (albeit via a minute deflection) from near the corner of the Sunderland penalty area.
Coutinho’s 2015/16 strike against Stoke was from 30 yards out, but from more like 80 degrees rather than the maximum 50. ‘His accuracy from distance is a formidable weapon for Liverpool, particularly when he is moving slightly infield, left to right and aiming for the top corner, and the shot was struck with a wonderful mix of power and precision. It was the arc of the ball, starting high and then taking a sudden dip, that took it past Butland, even though Stoke’s goalkeeper managed to get his fingertips to the ball.’ (Guardian)
The FA cup replay on 4 February 2015 at Bolton was the occasion for Coutinho’s first trademark goal to be displayed to an admiring crowd, Bolton News reporting that ‘Coutinho picked the ball up on the edge of the box, looked up, and curled a quite brilliant shot into the top corner.’
On 1 March, a second classic Coutinho strike was against Manchester City, again from the left corner of the penalty area. He ‘stepped inside Samir Nasri and curled a superb shot into the far corner. A goal worthy of winning any game, and, quite possibly, flooring a title challenge in the process.’ (Guardian) ‘A right-foot shot from the angle of the box, it was so perfect in angle and trajectory that Joe Hart, though he had plenty of time to see it [positioned as he was, well off the line on the left of the goal], had absolutely no chance of stopping it. It came out of nothing.’ (Mail) ‘Anyone who has watched Coutinho knows he can score from wide left positions, but Nasri and Zabaleta did not get close – and the Brazilian curved a wicked dipping shot into the far corner.’ (Manchester Evening News)
LFC crowds now urged him to shoot every time he got into that position, and he responded against QPR two months later with his ‘latest picture-book goal’. (Times). Once more he benefited from the goalkeeper being off his line to the left of the goalmouth, redundantly trying to narrow the angle to the near post.
Much to my surprise, these appear to be the only three Coutinho goals which completely satisfy the four criteria, as his reputation suggests more. Some eight per cent of Coutinho’s 54 LFC and 26 Barcelona goals can be described in this way. He fired in many more goals for Liverpool, but not from that sort of position, direction or height. He was just as likely to score to the left of the keeper as he did to the right. But no one had scored so many of this type of goal for LFC, and in such a short period, enough to make all fans hope that he could, and would, score his trademark again in such an exquisite way. It didn’t happen – at least not until he joined Barcelona.
Meanwhile he must have been flattered by many others imitating his skill. In 2015/16, Milner, Moreno, and Origi (as well as Coutinho himself) came close; in 2016/17 Henderson put Chelsea to the sword with a wonderful bender from the left 30 yards out.
2017/18 was a watershed season in this regard, overshadowed by Coutinho’s departure and Salah’s arrival, so promising during the overlap with both on the pitch. With the Hoffenheim keeper off the line at the near post, James Milner’s strike (15 August 2017) is recorded as an own goal because the defender touched it with the stubble on his chin, but the trajectory was, arguably, scarcely affected, and the aim was deliberate as there was no Liverpool player in a position to head it in anyway.
Salah took over Coutinho’s mantle, scoring now from the right left-footed, in the 5-2 defeat of Roma on 24 April 2018. By that time, he had made his mark in the Premier League from outside the penalty area, his strike against Southampton on November 18 being a mirror image of Coutinho’s trademark. With Mane also able to fire home in exactly the same way – right foot from the left-hand area on 27 August 2017 – against an Arsenal side so often his victim (‘the outstanding forward then curling a superb right-footed shot around Cech and into the corner of the net’ Telegraph) we could now see the tremendous potential of what became the modern version of the SAS.
I’ve found no example from 2018/19, but it flourished again in 2019/20. Lightning Mane scored twice (home and away) against Newcastle; TAA had a shot at being scorer of the year, with his MOTM 78’ rocket at the predicted ‘difficult’ game at Leicester or with a right-footed outswinger from the right at Turf Moor on 31 August; but the season’s outstanding strike had to be that of Curtis Jones to give a 1-0 victory over Everton (5 January 2020), the goalkeeper moving to the right far too late. Jones scored another against Lincoln City in the League Cup (24 Sep 2020), and tried again against Norwich in the FA Cup (2 March 22) but it just skimmed off the top of the bar.
Salah’s left foot returned to action in 20/21, scoring his curlers against Aston Villa, Crystal Palace, and Leicester; and who could forget his famous dribble through the Watford defence, culminating in another curler in the following season?
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So why are these strikes so much more numerous now than during the last century?
The examples above indicate that using the technique to score goals directly, rather than passing, was not a result of foreign players bringing it in from abroad – though, through film, the South Americans in particular have had a big influence on its use. There are two other possible explanations, a change in the standard weight of the ball not being one. First, was the increasing number of examples in the twenty-first century a result of adopting the fully plastic ball, which might have been much easier to spin and therefore curl round the keeper?
This was not an overnight development. Coating a traditional leather surface with plastic arrived for the World Cup in 1982, and synthetic leather was used during the same decade, both making the ball more waterproof. Stitching the panels disappeared in 2004 with Adidas’s ‘Roteiro’ ball, and Mitre’s V12 Delta arrived at the same time as Coutinho.
However, I’ve found no definitive answer to the question whether a plastic ball can be spun faster than a leather one, or whether the smooth surface assists, or detracts from, the Magnus effect. It has been described as ‘more aerodynamic’, but there must surely be less friction with the kicking boot to make it spin. (Anyway, ‘more aerodynamic’ has no meaning, as aerodynamics is the study of the flow of air around a body.)
Probably the most famous free kick was by Roberto Carlos for Brazil against France in 1997, a left-foot trivela aimed ten yards to the right of the goal from forty yards out. That goal was analysed by a team of French scientists, who estimated that the ball had to be spinning by about 10 revolutions per second to achieve that result.
Another possibility is the increasing use of inverted wingers, players who do not occupy the same space on the field as their left- or right- footedness suggests? Modern styles of football have turned players attacking down the wing from natural crossers of the ball into penetrators of defences and goalscorers. It is a tactic which can be traced back to the 1920s, but which has become popular in the last thirty years or so. The old left-footer on the left would have to score the sort of goal we’re looking for with a trivela. A right-footer playing on the left will naturally turn inwards and see the option available, especially if the goalkeeper has narrowed the angle trying to defend the goal from a straight shot.
Which brings us back to Peter Thompson, because guess what! He was an inverted winger! Yet go back through the players in our little hall of fame – how many, other than Salah, could be so described? Very few. I think the answer must lie in a combination of the plastic ball, and the very fluidity of the modern game, in which positional change is the norm and recruitment favours those able to switch roles during a match.
Copyright - Colin Rogers for LFChistory.net
