Roberto Baggio's Top 5 Free Kicks

‘’He took free kicks like no other.’’ Andrea Pirlo remarked. ‘’I just used to stand there in training and study him for days. I think I learned something in the end.’’

Pirlo was of course talking about Roberto Baggio, one of the bearded geniuses' idols. It can be easy to overlook just how good The Divine Ponytail was at set pieces, given how brilliant he was at more or less everything else on a football pitch.

He's among the best free kick specialists in Serie A history, in the top five surrounded by illustrious names (Zola, Del Piero, Pirlo and Mihajlovic are the other four) - and he inspired two out of the four to boot. That speaks volumes.

I’ve given myself the arduous task of trying to whittle down Baggio’s top five free kicks from all competitions. As someone who has most of his goals imprinted to memory as an ardent lover of the man from Caldogno, there were some goals I’d somehow forgotten about and it was a joy just to sit back on YouTube and marvel at his genius (as if anyone needs an excuse anyways).

The difficult part was deciding which ones to leave out, so I took into consideration things like importance of the goal, who the opponents were and significance of the game.

So enough waffling from me and lets all marvel together at the ponytailed genius. If you felt there were certain goals I left off the list I would like to hear suggestions.

The Day the King of Pop Visited Exeter City

This article originally appeared on TheseFootballTimes

Described by Reuters as “bedlam”, a special train was leaving Paddington Station in London, on June 14th, 2002. The destination was Exeter and the scenes at the station were said to be one of “pure chaos, recalling Beatlemania back in the sixties.” Two hundred fans clamoured on board the train, some paying up to £100 for the privilege of being on the same train as the man. Others managed to sneak on for free amidst the pandemonium. One enthused fan said: “I paid £100 and it was worth every penny. No, he didn’t come through to see us, but just being on the same train was enough.”

Dennis Bergkamp and Italy's Religious War

This article first appeared on IBWM and later on World Soccer 

When you think of Dennis Bergkamp numerous superlatives instantly spring to mind; perfectionist, genius, artist, visionary. You hear his name mentioned in conversation and your thoughts are sharply brought back to that defying-footballing-physics goal against Newcastle in 2002 or his three touch masterpiece vs Argentina at France ’98. You flashback to the sumptuous spin-and-delicate-lob assist for Freddie Ljungberg against Juventus in 2001, to the seemingly endless supply of defence-splitting passes for Ian Wright, Nicholas Anelka and Thierry Henry. Dennis Bergkamp was a footballers’ footballer who played for the players as much as he did for the fans.

The term 'donkey', however, is one that nobody should ever associate with the Dutchman, yet for a brief period during his disastrous two-year spell at Inter in the mid ‘90s, things became so bad that the Rome-based publication La Repubblica renamed their ‘donkey of the week’ award for worst player to‘Bergkamp della settimana’ (Bergkamp of the week). How could a player of his unquestionable talent be reduced to a punchline?

In 1993 Bergkamp was ready to leave Ajax, having been promoted from the youth team by Johan Cruyff in 1986. He believed the time was right at 24 to seek fresh pastures and felt he had hit his ceiling within the confines of the Dutch game and let the directors at Ajax know during the winter break of the 1992-93 season that this would be his final campaign, giving them ample time to find a replacement. Cruyff, knowing full well the stark contrast between the countries’ footballing philosophies, pleaded with him not to leave Holland for Italy, but rather urged to follow him to Spain, and more specifically to Barcelona were his ‘Dream Team’ were in the midst of their golden age.  

Bergkamp, quick to comprehend that with the three-foreigner rule in La Liga and Hristo Stoichkov, Ronald Koeman and Michael Laudrup already at the club, he wouldn’t be guaranteed a starting position at the Camp Nou.

His mentor’s pleas fell on deaf ears as Bergkamp had his eyes on only one league, Serie A, comfortably the world’s most daunting for attacking players. He had begun to take Italian lessons a year beforehand in preparation for the move. ’’For a long time my heart was set on Italy because it was absolutely the best football country then. Italy, Italy, Italy… it’s all I was thinking about.’’