Roberto Carlos admits iconic France free-kick was a fluke

Matt Stead

Roberto Carlos has admitted that his legendary free-kick for Brazil against France in 1997 was essentially a fluke.

Carlos entered himself into free-kick folklore with a rather silly strike against France in the 1997 Tournoi de France.

The goal was discussed in the former left-back’s Portrait of an Icon, which states:

‘Of course, it’s impossible to talk about Carlos without reflecting on that goal, the set-piece strike against France at Le Tournoi which came to define an entire style of taking free-kicks. Perhaps the most ludicrous reaction came from the BBC, who asked physicists to define whether the goal was physically possible (I know).

‘”We have shown that the path of a sphere when it spins is a spiral,” lead researcher Christophe Clanet from the Ecole Polytechnique in Paris told BBC News. “On a real soccer pitch, we will see something close to this ideal spiral, but gravity will modify it. But if you shoot strongly enough, like Carlos did, you can minimise the effect of gravity.” Football 0-1 Science.

‘Carlos had a slightly less academic explanation: “The truth is that I just fix the position of the target in my mind, close my eyes and try to hit it as hard as possible.” Football 1-1 Science.’

But the 44-year-old has devastated us all by conceding that the free-kick was, in actual fact, a fluke, in a quite wonderful in-depth feature on L’Equipe.

“The ball was going completely wide but the wind brought it back to the goal,” he said. “It was a miracle.”

We’re off the cry in a corner.

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