They have the wall and the keeper, but the other way around
You don’t often see much in the way of new ideas when it comes to defending free kicks. Taking them has seen all sorts of new ideas over the years, from hitting the ball under the wall to putting attackers in to block the keeper but since the defensive wall was invented, it has rarely, if ever, been adapted.
But Nice’s reserves tried something at the weekend that is just crazy enough to work. Facing a free kick in a dangerous position in a game against Grenoble last week, the French side mixed up how you defend one in a way we’d never seen before.
They moved the wall back to the goal line and moved the keeper to the spot 10 yards from the place of the free. As the keeper was still in the box, he could use his hands and by placing two men to essentially block efforts directly at the edges of the goal, they forced the taker to try and get the ball over the keeper and past a phalanx of men on the line.
The taker has a good go but it is headed off the line. Would this work against a precision taker like Andrea Pirlo or a power merchant like Cristiano Ronaldo?
We’ve no idea, but we’d love to see them try.
Infaillible technique de l’OGC Nice sur coup-franc by metro-sports
Hat-tip to Yahoo
