I waited to post this while I tried to decide whether it was caused by the brilliance of Juninho (arguably the greatest dead-ball striker ever) or by the confusion of Víctor Valdés (“he gets the job done”). Did Juninho’s mesmerizing shot lull Valdés into making the wrong choice? Or did Valdés’s inexplicable error allow an improbable shot an improbable path to the goal? I still don’t know, but if the ambiguous relationship between a mistake and a moment of genius ever made a fluky goal beautiful, this is the one.
Read More: Barcelona, Champions League
by Brian Phillips · February 25, 2009
Well said. I fear that he would have been struggling even had he stayed on his line but he doesn’t make mistakes look pretty Valdez.
Wow.
The video is actually an optical illusion – Juninho actually kicked the ball in such a way that it created a black hole, passed through several other dimensions simultaneously, and then re-appeared from another black hole inside the net. It clearly explains the look of awe on Valdes’ face – its not every day that one gets to see a soccer ball pass through a temporal vortex. That doesn’t even happen in Nike commercials!
Meanwhile, I’d like to think that, in some almost-parallel universe, Juninho just made a brilliant save to thwart a very average Victor Valdes free kick.
I don’t see Valdes doing much wrong there.
Goalkeepers often take a few steps out before they can fully see the trajectory of the ball, to give themselves better conditions for catching/boxing the ball. It is a calculated risk.
Players are rarely conscious of keepers’ movements in those situations and at the same time able to put it exactly where they can’t reach it, but it seems as if Juninho nailed both those things down on this one. Another example of this is freekicks struck toward the near post as opposed to the far one or a cross; it capitalizes on the goalie expecting the ball to is right or in front of him.
But, honestly, I think Juninho meant this one as a cross. His technique indicates that he wants to give the ball a kind of Ronaldo-dip, but it looks like he hits it too far out on his foot, essentially extending the ball further than intended.
Valdes is still shit, of course.
No, no that was intended as a shot to the far post.
p.s. Juninho was giving that kind of dip to the ball before anyone had even heard of Ronaldo
This freekick reminds me of the Ronaldinho goal against England in the World Cup. When a good deadball taker goes up against a Buffon or Casillas, he sees where they position themselves and aims accordingly.
When he goes up against Valdes, he just tries to get his shot on frame and lets incompetence do the rest.