Declan Rice free kick
Declan Rice (canno73 / Bigstockphoto.com)

Declan Rice Joins the Conversation for the Best Free Kick Goals of All Time

Players / April 15, 2025

Scoring one world-class free kick in a Champions League quarter final is good going. But to net two in the space of 12 minutes? That must be an extraordinary feeling. Declan Rice has probably never struck the ball as cleanly as he did for his brace of free kicks against Real Madrid in April, with both strikes so precise and powerful they rendered the Galacticos’ goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois with almost zero chance of saving them.

Not bad, when you consider that the pair of strikes had an xG of just 3.7% and 6.3%, respectively. To make the feat all the more remarkable, the midfielder had never before scored directly from a free kick in a career spanning more than 300 games. Now, he joins an exclusive list of players that have scored two in the same contest – in the Champions League, that club features just four others; namely Cristiano Ronaldo, Neymar, Rivaldo and Hakim Ziyech. Not bad company to be in…

How to Score a Free Kick

Football free kick

In theory, defending a free kick – and preventing a goal – should be easier than scoring from outside the penalty area. Such long-range shots are low probability chances even with the ball at the feet of world-class talents, with the task made even harder by the presence of the wall of defenders, who in some cases will stand north of 6ft tall. That means the taker has to get the ball up and over the wall – but down and under the crossbar – and still beat the goalkeeper.

Rice’s first free kick offered up an alternative route to goal. The Arsenal man applied so much bend and whip to his strike that he was able to curl it around the defensive wall, with the trajectory of the ball such that it actually started wide of the post before arcing back in. So precise was his second free kick that it crossed the line almost perfectly in the top left-hand corner of Real’s goal – Courtois, who stands a considerable 6ft 7in, found himself unable to reach the ball.

How do you take a free kick like Rice’s? The answer is simple: practice. The best set piece takers in history are often quoted confirming the notion that repetition is key… while, of course, maintaining the correct technique that can send the ball up and over the wall or, in Rice’s case, around it and then back to the target. Given that he had scored zero free kicks from 12 career attempts up until his Real Madrid heroics, Rice is proof that practice on the training ground can eventually lead to perfection on the pitch!

The Greatest Free Kicks of All Time

Free kick up close

There are hundreds of contenders for any rundown of the best free kicks of all time, although top spot should surely be reserved for a strike that even physicists claim defied science…

Roberto Carlos (vs France, 1997)

Brazil were taking on the host nation at the Tournoi de France back in 1997… an unusual tournament that, to that point, had only been held twice (and has since disappeared off the schedule altogether). The South Americans win a free kick around 40 yards from goal, which – by general logic – is too far a distance to shoot from.

But with little in the way of competitive pressure on what was, effectively, an exhibition game, Brazil left back Roberto Carlos thought he’d step up and try something he’s been working on in training. That was his trivela, a term used to describe a ‘banana shot’ struck with the outside of the boot. Now, if you try this in your next Sunday League game, it’s likely that the corner flag is more in danger of being hit by the ball than the back of the net.

But Carlos was a master of his craft, and on that fateful night in Lyon, he got it absolutely, jaw-droppingly right. So wide was the ball heading when he struck it, a ball boy sat to the left of France’s goal instinctively ducked. However, the ball arced back towards the goal like a homing missile; but in a fashion that happened so late that French goalkeeper Fabian Barthez didn’t move a muscle.

Later, when asked why he hadn’t moved, Barthez replied: “Why would I? The ball was heading for the corner flag.” Physicists, meanwhile, have claimed that the Brazilian struck the ball so forcefully that he was able to defy the laws of gravity, instead sending the ball into a ‘spiral trajectory’ that even stood up to scientific testing in a laboratory.

Modh Faiz Subri (vs Pahang, 2016)

Modh Faiz Subri is unlikely to be a household name in any household outside of Malaysia. But on one fateful day in February 2016, he became a global megastar. The attacker was turning out for Pulau Penang in a Malaysia Super League game against Pahang, when the former won a free kick on the left-hand side of the pitch and around 50 yards from goal.

The typical, nay, the sensible thing to do would have been to curl a cross into the penalty area. But Faiz Subri had other ideas.

As the ball left his right boot, it appeared as if it was heading for row Z… but then Roberto Carlos’ ‘spiral trajectory’ took hold and the ball veered violently south-east and into the top corner of the net. The Pahang goalkeeper, pulled hopelessly out of position, stared at Faiz Subri in disbelief.

He was the first player to ever win the Puskas Award – the trophy given out to the year’s best goal, as per FIFA’s voting panel – for a free kick, and remains so to this day.

Paul Gascoigne (vs Arsenal, 1991)

There’s a train of thought that modern day boot design, allied to the technology that goes into making top-level match balls, makes it easier for players to hit knuckleball shots these days – the kind where the ball dips and swerves unexpectedly, and makes a goalkeeper’s job so much more difficult.

Back in 1991, when football boots were just black leather and the ball was a series of leather hexagons stitched together, there were no such worries for goalkeepers – unless, of course, the free kick taker was able to unleash hell with one stroke of their foot.

Step forward Paul Gascoigne, the precocious 23-year-old playing for Tottenham against their old enemy Arsenal in an FA Cup semi-final in 1991. His shot does not deviate from its trajectory – but is struck with so much power, from 30 yards out no less, that Gunners keeper David Seaman is left grasping at thin air.