A wise man once said watching American football is like watching hours of set pieces. But American football doesn’t have anything on the ingenuity of soccer teams always looking for an innovative way to attack or defend from set pieces.
A couple weeks ago we said putting the goalkeeper in the wall was the greatest tactical innovation of 2020, and we stand by that. But this latest set piece trickery might be the funniest tactical innovation of 2020.
When you’ve got a free kick in front of goal, the opponent is always going to stack the wall, with or without a goalie in it. So you’ve got a couple choices: shoot around the wall (above, to the side, underneath) or lay the ball off to a teammate. In this recent futsal match, the attacking side found a unique way to do the latter.
Gol extraño pic.twitter.com/02xkB0uOsw
— MerlinRecargado (@merlinrecargado) September 25, 2020
Did the player mean to fall on his face and head the ball to his teammate? We sure hope so, but given the force with which he hit the floor, we can’t be positive.
Either way, this one’s right up there with the barking dog trick in basketball, the Flying V in hockey (is that a real thing?) and the fumblerooski in American football.
