The Great Debate: What is the best free-kick ever scored? | OneFootball

After Lionel Messi’s showcase at the weekend, we want to find the best ever free-kick goal.

This is definitely a crowded field but we love a challenge. So, who scored the best free-kick ever? Our writers have their say …

Lewis Ambrose

Oleksandr Aliyev, obviously.

What do you mean you hadn’t seen this one before?

Playing against Turkey at the U-20 World Cup in 2005, Aliyev stepped up for Ukraine and absolutely smashed one in from almost the halfway line. If a dead ball has ever been struck better than this, I haven’t seen it.

Aliyev went on to win 28 caps for Ukraine and played for Lokomotiv Moscow and Dynamo Kyiv … before slipping into the amateur game in his early 30s.

Ian McCourt

I feel like I am betraying every ounce of Irish blood in my veins by saying this but … it has to be David Beckham against Greece.

Beckham – an undeservedly, underrated footballer – worked and worked and worked on his technique and it paid off so many times, but never as much as this one.

With 93 minutes on the clock, the country he was captaining were facing the ignominy of having to play-off for a World Cup spot.

That was until he took the ball, the responsibility and the mental pressure and from 30 yards made something very difficult look very easy indeed.

Alex Mott

It’s an excusable truth that late 80s Serie A was the greatest league in the world ever.

Every single world-class player at the time was on the peninsula with all 16 teams having at least one star to eclipse anything you’d find in England or Spain. Zico was at Udinese for Christ’s sake!

But the absolute pick was, obviously, Diego Maradona and his Napoli side.

And probably El Diego’s greatest ever goal came in what, at the time, looked like a title decider at home to Juventus.

With both teams neck-and-neck and chasing the Scudetto, it was the Argentine genius who decided to game with this quite ridiculous free-kick from inside the area.

How on earth you get the ball up and down from there is still, 30 years later, utterly mind-boggling.

Phil Costa

I know what you’re thinking. Where is Juninho? How could you ignore Roberto Carlos? Surely Messi must’ve had a few?

Well let me introduce you to Mohd Faiz Subri – Malaysia’s finest – who managed to bag this ridiculous effort against Pahang in 2016.

There’s always an element of hit and hope to free-kicks from this distance but look at the swerve. The swerve!

In the space of about four seconds, the ball looks like it’s travelling for the top left corner before dipping violently to the right and into the side netting.

Goalkeeper left with no chance. Defenders bamboozled. The only thing I’m not happy with is the complete lack of celebration.

Elliott Bretland

Juninho Pernambucano. The Brazilian David Beckham and THE king of free-kicks.

Back in the mid-Noughties when Lyon ruled French football, more often than not, you would check out the Champions League highlights (before the days of social media and 24/7 coverage) and find that the midfielder had scored a stunning set-piece for the Ligue 1 giants.

Juninho had unbelievable ability and an incredible knack of hitting the ball so sweetly, so true, with the inside of his right boot that he could score from the most bizarre angles and distances.

Now, the best free-kicks usually hit the so-called postage stamp and can’t be stopped. Not his one against Bayern Munich, however.

This one zoomed through the air before cannoning off the woodwork. However, the real beauty is, the strike was so perfect, goalkeeper Oliver Kahn had no clue where it was going to finish and ended up clambering into the post. What a hit.

Matt Frohlich

For me there is only one winner and it has to be Paul Gascoigne’s FA Cup Semi-final strike for Tottenham against Arsenal in 1991.

Matches against your arch rivals do not come much bigger than this, so to step up and hit the ball so magnificently into the top corner from 30 yards is a moment to savour for every Spurs fan.

It goes down as arguably the best ever free-kick scored at Wembley and who more fitting to score it then one of the best footballing talents England has ever produced.

Now although I wasn’t alive to witness it, the noise from the Spurs fans and the commentary are more than enough to give me goosebumps every time I watch the replay. There’s only four words for it:

‘Oh I say… Brilliant!’