Today in How Not To Take A Free Kick, we have Generic Yellow Team trying to put one in against Ajax in the Netherlands, and, you guessed it, failing terribly.
OK, the yellow team’s name is actually NAC Breda, I just thought that perhaps they might want to remain anonymous after that catastrophe of a free kick. Honestly, I get that the whole "adding your own players to the wall" and "switching them out of it" is supposed to mess with the keeper, but that was absolutely terrible.
It seems like it was pretty much all the taker’s fault. He had to get the kick around the outside of his buddies in the wall in order for the tactic to work. Said buddies had moved forward a couple of yards to throw off the orientation of the keeper. You can actually see the keeper move slightly to his right becuse of it, which would have meant that had the ball travelled outside the right of the wall, to the keeper’s left, he would have been left dangerously out of position. Instead, well…
…a member of the ol’ human wall is left in pain thinking about what just happened.
If you want to see how the whole multiple wall/teammates in the wall tactic is supposed to work, take a look at this squad of high schoolers from Japan. Needless to say the video one of the goofier things you’ll see, but they actually score, which, you know, counts.
The memes write themselves.
As high as NAC Breda’s fail ranks in the pantheon of How Not To Take A Free Kick history, there are arguably ones that rank higher. Namely, these nominees for The18s Pooskas award: the award for the worst free kicks in soccer. Trust us, you need to check out these fails.
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