Our list of the best free-kick takers ever comprises some of the game's biggest stars – and some considerably less household names.
Free-kick taking is an art, and FFT's countdown of its finest exponents is a celebration of that art.
Let's dive straight in, shall we? Just click any of the arrows over on the right to get started!
Up there with the very best players in world football during the first decade of the 21st century, Thierry Henry amassed 226 goals for Arsenal alone – including 174 in the Premier League.
Among those 174 Premier League goals were 12 directly from free-kicks – among the most in the league’s history – which the silky-smooth Frenchman scored with customary class.
In terms of conversion rate, Roberto Carlos was not the most devastating free-kick taker – but when he did find the net with one, it tended to be pretty spectacular.
Need we give any more compelling an example than the iconic, World Cup-winning left-back’s 40-yard howitzer for Brazil against France in 1997?
Capped 11 times by Brazil, midfielder Marcoc Assuncao spent the prime years of his career in Europe with Roma and Real Betis.
Distance was no barrier to Assuncao, an exceptional striker of the ball whose set-piece prowess played a major part in Roma’s 2000/01 Serie A title success under Fabio Capello.
There wasn’t much Rivaldo couldn’t do with the ball at his feet – and the Ballon d’Or-winning Brazilian’s fantastic free-kick ability was just another facet of his world-class game.
He scored a deliciously deft one for Olympiacos against Liverpool – in front of the Kop, no less – during that Champions League game (you know, the one where Steven Gerrard almost broke Andy Gray).
Andreas Brehme memorably notched West Germany’s 1990 World Cup final winner from the penalty, but the goal-fond left-back was also one of the best free-kick takers of all time.
Curiously, Brehme – who placed third for the 1990 Ballon d’Or – took penalties with his left foot – but free-kicks and corners with his (supposedly) weaker right foot.
Romania’s greatest ever player and up there with the best in the world during the 80s and 90s, Gheorghe Hagi scored his fair share of impressive free-kicks.
Among them was the only goal of the game in the 1986 European Super Cup, as newly crowned European champions Steaua Bucharest defeated Dynamo Kyiv.
Pep Guardiola knows a thing or two about football, and he once described James Ward-Prowse as “the best free-kick taker I have ever seen” – some statement coming from a man who coached Lionel Messi.
And in the modern era, Ward-Prowse is certainly right up there, moving to within one of David Beckham’s Premier League free-kick goals record (18) by the age of 28, regularly employing the knuckleball technique to unstoppable effect.
Around the turn of the 21st century, Zinedine Zidane was probably the best footballer on the planet – and there weren’t many better free-kick takers than him.
Arguably his two most notable free-kick goals came at the Euros: a beautiful bending effort against Spain in the 2000 quarter-finals, and a similarly unstoppable strike against England in France’s tournament opener four years later.
No goalkeeper has ever scored at the World Cup – but legendary Paraguay custodian Jose Luis Chilavert came seriously close to making that particular bit of history on a couple of occasions.
Scorer of 67 professional goals for club and country, in 1998 Chilavert became the first ‘keeper to even take a free-kick at the World Cup finals – almost scoring against Bulgaria – and had another couple of attempts in 2002, including one which tested Iker Casillas.
Surely Europe’s finest footballer of the 80s, Michel Platini was the first player to win the Ballon d’Or three years running.
And the voters no doubt took France’s Euro 1984-winning captain’s elite free-kick expertise into account when deciding those awards – especially after he opened the scoring with one in the final of that tournament.
An all-time great in the playmaker role, Juan Roman Riquelme was a set-piece specialist who dispatched his fair share of free-kicks for club and country.
Capped 51 times by Argentina, the ever-graceful Riquelme scored two free-kicks in one game to seal a 2-0 World Cup qualifying win over Chile in 2007.
Peru’s best ever player and one of the finest to come out of South America, Teofilo Cubillas combined playmaking prowess with top-notch set-piece ability.
He famously starred at the 1978 World Cup, finishing as joint second-top scorer – opening his account for the tournament with a brace against Scotland, which included an astonishing 20-yard free-kick with the outside of his foot.
A regular goalscorer straight from free-kicks – with some estimates placing his career tally close to 100 – Brazilian midfielder Marcelinho Carioca enjoyed great success with Corinthians around the turn of the century, helping them to Club World Cup glory in 2000.
“The key is getting on target and letting the ‘keeper deal with it,” said the man who also scored five goals for Corinthians straight from corners. “Repetition leads to perfection.”
Scorer of arguably the best greatest free-kick in Premier League history – a postage-stamp, borderline physics-defying effort for Manchester United against Portsmouth in 2008 – Cristiano Ronaldo has never shied away from a set-piece goal opportunity.
Another exponent of the knuckleball method, the five-time Ballon d’Or winner makes every free-kick an event in its own right, adopting his trademark legs-apart stance before stepping up.
Widely regarded as Venezuela’s best player of all time, Juan Arango spent a decade in Europe, making 195 appearances for Mallorca and 171 for Borussia Monchengladbach.
Nicknamed ‘Arangol’ (self-explanatory, we’d hope), the attacking midfielder scored 80 goals for those two clubs combined, many of which came from his supremely accurate free-kicks – of which he scored 15 in the Bundesliga, among the most ever.
The gold standard in metronomic playmaking, Andrea Pirlo spent his career stroking the ball around with mesmerising, inimitable grace.
And the World Cup-winning Italian icon demonstrated that very quality in his free-kick taking, whether he was shooting – which yielded 26 goals, among the most from free-kicks in Serie A history – or putting it on a plate for teammates.
Towering centre-forwards don’t tend to excel at scoring directly from free-kicks, but Pierre van Hooijdonk was among the best in the world in that regard during the 90s and 00s.
The Dutchman had a penchant for bending them in with laser-guided precision, as he demonstrated to great effect during Feyenoord’s triumphant 2001/02 UEFA Cup run.
No goalkeeper in the history of football has scored nearly as many goals as Rogerio Ceni, the eccentric Brazilian shot-stopper who, when not keeping the ball out of his net, stuck it in the opposition’s 129 times.
Ceni, who was Sao Paulo’s designated penalty taker (naturally), converted an astonishing 59 free-kicks, including six in the Copa Libertadores.
Winner of both the Ballon d’Or and FIFA World Player of the Year in 1993, Roberto Baggio established himself as one of the greatest players of all time with his regular brilliance for Juventus, Italy and more.
Clinical with free-kicks from just outside the box, ‘The Divine Ponytail’ had a technique which was described as a cross between the styles of Michel Platini, Zico and Diego Maradona.
Ok, Italy have had quite a lot of players capable of making full use of free-kicks, and Gianfranco Zola was one of the very best in that respect.
As a youngster, the diminutive genius spent hours honing his technique with Napoli teammate Diego Maradona – and the Chelsea icon’s return of 12 Premier League free-kick goals, as many as Thierry Henry and Cristiano Ronaldo, rather shows that it paid off!
You didn’t think Pele would be a bad free-kick taker, did you? Of course ‘O Rei’ could be relied upon to put the ball down and find the net.
His free-kick for Brazil against Bulgaria in 1966 made him the first player to score at three successive World Cups (he also put one away as Brazil beat Italy to regain the trophy in 1970), while the final goal of his incomparable career was a 30-yard dead-ball special for the New York Cosmos. Very on-brand.
A World Cup-winning teammate of Pele’s at the 1958 and 1962 World Cups, Didi etched his name into football history by invented the ‘folha seca’ (‘falling leaf’) technique – aka knuckleball.
One of the world’s very best players of the mid-20th century, Didi scored a large chunk of his Brazil goals from free-kicks, and his legacy is still going strong to this very day.
Whether he was bamboozling David Seaman from 40 yards or curling it in from much closer to goal, Ronaldinho was a goal threat whenever he placed the ball down for a free-kick.
Adept at firing them under a jumping wall or hitting the knuckleball button, the Brazilian passed his free-kick prowess on to a young Barcelona teammate of his by the name of Lionel Messi…
Plenty tried to bend it like Beckham, but no one was David Beckham, England’s set-piece king of the 90s and 00s.
While Becks set a Premier League record with 18 goals directly from free-kicks for Manchester United – including five during the 2000/01 campaign alone – it’s the ones he scored on the international stage which are most readily recallable, none more so than that 93rd-minute equaliser against Greece.
Up there with the best players Italy has ever produced and among the finest in the world at his peak, Alessandro Del Piero scored 52 free-kick goals over the course of his career (52 at club level and six for his country), an Italian record.
A key member of the Azzurri’s 2006 World Cup-winning side, Del Piero’s speciality – inspired by the technique of Michel Platini – was to curl the ball over the wall and have it dip late into the corner of the net.
One of the best Asian footballers of all time, Shunsuke Nakamura is a legendary figure in the history of the Japanese national team – and Celtic, where he spent four memorable years from 2005 to 2009.
His iconic status is in no small part due to his free-kick prowess, which ex-Tottenham and England man Steve Perryman – who coached in Japan while Nakamura was playing there – summed up best, remarking that he “could open a tin of beans with his left foot”.
Diego Maradona scored his most famous goals from open play, but Argentina’s ‘Golden Boy’ was a simply superb free-kick taker.
Surely one of the most-fouled players in history, he won a significant number of free-kicks himself and had an exceptional knack for bending them right into the corner – with a style that influenced the likes of Andrea Pirlo, Gianfranco Zola and the next guy on our list…
The greatest footballer of all time is not the greatest free-kick taker of all time, but he’s still an absolute artist in those circumstances.
Argentina’s 2022 World Cup-winning captain has demonstrated as much on countless occasions, leaving goalkeeper after goalkeeper rooted to the spot with some outrageous finishes – perhaps the best of which came for Barcelona against Liverpool in the 2018/19 Champions League semi-finals.
By one estimate, Zico scored 101 goals directly from free-kicks – and the sensational Brazilian midfielder’s free-kick ability was such that that figure is eminently believable.
A supreme player who could bend the ball in all manner of directions, markedly leaning back and raising his knee as he struck it, Zico’s unpredictability made him an utter nightmare for goalkeepers to read.
One of the great goalscoring defenders, the late Sinisa Mihajlovic was blessed with an extraordinary ability to score from distance – which he showed off time and time again from free-kicks, netting a Serie A-record 28 goals directly from them.
The cherry on the cake 63-time Yugoslavia international was a rare free-kick hat-trick for Lazio – where he won his first of two Scudetti, the other coming with Inter – against Sampdoria in 1998.
As attack-minded as defenders get, Ronald Koeman possessed a horse-like kick which he used to maximum effect as go-to free-kick taker for club and country.
Dubbed the ‘King of free-kicks’, the legendary Dutchman showcased his trademark attribute on the ultimate stage, smashing one in from the edge of the area to seal Barcelona’s maiden European Cup triumph in 1992.
Top spot was never in any doubt as far as we’re concerned; Lyon icon Juninho Pernambucano is a class apart in the art of free-kick taking.
If his fellow Brazilian Didi conceived the knuckleball technique and a string of others excelled at it, Juninho truly perfected it – making some poor ‘keepers look especially helpless by finding the net from further than 40 yards out on multiple occasions.
