Coventry’s Scoop Free-Kick

By: Bob | March 8th, 2007

If you ever need a way to avoid doing work on Thursdays — I’m venturing a guess that you do since you are reading this — make a point of checking out the Guardian’s weekly Classic YouTube blog. Each week users submit some of classic videos from the football and sporting world. Some are duds, but many are amazing. The video above comes from this week’s selection and features a scoop free-kick from Coventry against Everton in a match in 1970. It was after this goal that FIFA introduced the rule that requires a ball to roll a full circumference when a free kick is taken before another player can kick it. It seems to me that a scoop shot like this one would be harder than one coming from a ball on the ground, but the powers who be must disagree.