The knowledge of how to make a ball wobble in the air dates back more than a century, to 1908. There’s some debate about who the bulk of the credit should go to, but mainly it rests with Eddie “Knuckles” Cicotte, a pitcher for the Chicago White Sox. Cicotte discovered that with the right grip he could eliminate the spin on the baseball.
The result was the knuckleball, an erratic, impossible-to-hit pitch. Some 85 years later, a Brazilian footballer called Antônio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Jr. – Juninho Pernamubucano for short – applied the same physics to a soccer ball.
Between 2001 and 2009, Pernambucano won seven consecutive championships with French Ligue 1 side Lyon. He notched 100 goals, 44 of which were direct from free kicks. The most famous of his free kicks came in the Champions League in 2003. Juninho hit a long range effort that bamboozled Bayern Munich’s Oliver Kahn – the world’s best keeper at the time – so much that he smashed his head on the post.
Other players have since learned from the master, with the likes of Andrea Pirlo, Hakan Çalhanoğlu and Cristiano Ronaldo joining the fun. If you’re prepared to practice, you can too.
In his book I Think Therefore I Play, Pirlo recounts how he practiced for weeks, sending balls flying over the fence at the Milanello training ground and annoying the kit man. His breakthrough came, as they sometimes do, while on the toilet. He rushed to the training ground, grabbed a ball and produced a “geometric gem.” Pirlo had realised that it was about how the ball was struck, not where:
“In essence, the ball needs to be struck from underneath using your first three toes. You have to keep your foot as straight as possible and then relax it in one fell swoop. That way, the ball doesn’t spin in the air, but drops rapidly towards the goal. That’s when it starts to rotate.”
You won’t get it first time. Or even on your hundredth. But if you follow these principles and be patient, one day you’ll crack it.
- Place the ball with the valve facing towards you.
- Adjust your run up according to your distance from goal, but never stand more than 5 meters from the ball.
- Aim to hit the ball with your full side foot. Keep it locked.
- Kick up the ball, from top to bottom.
- Follow through quickly.