Cristiano Ronaldo Has Not Scored with Any of His Last 51 Free-Kick Attempts

Cristiano Ronaldo is regarded as one of the best free-kick specialsts in world football, but his strike-rate from set-pieces isn’t what you’d expect from the 2015 Ballon D’Or, as this study from AS shows

Ronaldo developed his free-kick taking specialism during his six seasons at Manchester United, and scored some spectacular efforts during his time at Old Trafford, as he honed the style that now known as the ‘Knuckleball’.

The ‘Knuckleball’ entails blasting at the top of the ball with the instep, which also trying to apply dip and swerve; when it works, it looks spectacular, but when it fails, it can look spectacularly bad, and many of Ronaldo’s recent ones fall into the latter category.

The AS piece explains that Ronaldo’s free-kick success rate has dropped off since Gareth Bale’s arrival at the Bernabeu, which saw the pair divide up free-kick duties; Ronaldo from the left, and Ronaldo from the right.

We need to go back to last season’s Champions League semi-final against Bayern Munich for Ronaldo’s last goal from a free-kick, and interestingly, even that particular one was more about stealthy cleverness than the knuckleball perfection with which he’s associated, as Ronaldo sent that one under the wall.

Cristiano has not scored a single goal with his last 51 free-kicks: 21 hit the wall, 14 were off-target and 16 were repelled by the goalkeeper or the posts.

Ronaldo scored his last free-kick goal in the 4-0 win against Bayern Munich in the semi-finals of the Champions League on 29 April 2014.

As is well documented, Ronaldo doesn’t suffer such problems from the penalty spot, and boasts an incredible 91.6% success rate from the spot.

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