Daily Mail's best free kick takers ever

Axeslammer wrote:

Fey wrote:No van Hooijdonck??? THis list is SHITE!

And what about Yildirim, that guy is actually World champion in free kicks!

If Van Hooijdonck does not make the top 5, I don't want to see the list....it's as simple as that

He won an entire fucking Uefacup *campaign* singlehandedly based on his superb freekicks !

No one else can make such a claim

(where's EMP's favourite manager on that list btw, he wasn't bad either)

There's no denying that Ronald Koeman packed a fearsome shot. I actually liked and rated him as a player, but what he did to Valencia as a coach was unorgivable. He will always be an hijo de puta for that and for inflicting him on us you deserve to have him coach Oranje for a decade!

Platini should be in the top 10 for sure. Platini's freekicks were much more accurate than say Becks & he had a much higher conversion rate. If Platinim would have had the Freekicks Becks had v Greece , he wouldn't have scored from the 9th attempt (saving England's ass), but already be on a hattrick.

Koeman should be in it for sure too, just for the number he scored.

Koeman & Platini are opposite ends of the freekick spectrum. Koeman was mainly about power (& accuracy, great piledrives) while Platini placed the ball were nobody could (great curves, over the wall)

Both are very diffucult techniques. I rate the hybrids (example Van Hooijdonk's curved balls were incredibly paced too) even higher (it's an even more difficult technique.

Those swervers are hardest to judge, which imo indeed require lots of skill, but have a luck factor too. They're not like toe-poking (for finsihing), if you're good at that you can aim very well. Imo that goes less for those swerve shots.

Other great piledriver not mentioned yet: Arie Haan. Dino Zoff still has nightmares about him.

Current great piledrivers: Aliyev (Kyiv), Alex (Chelski)

Definitely Platini. Also Garrincha.

Axeslammer wrote:This is a *must* see video

Some of the most spectacular, awesome, hilarious and brilliant free kicks ever :

I never trust your 'must see' videos after one of them turned out to be a video of peter gabriel riding around the stage in a giant ball.

Frikikreli!!!!!!!!!!

Ray Parlour wrote:Frikikreli!!!!!!!!!!

Axeslammer wrote:Frikikreli :




Specially for EMP : the Howitzer from Groningen

Like I said, great player, crap coach!