The Most Useless Tricks in Soccer

By: Daryl | August 19th, 2009
   

This might be a personal issue, but I hate when footballers try unnecessary tricks. Skills designed to show off their skills, rather than skills designed to actually acomplish anything. For me, it’s up there with diving and asking the ref to card an opposition player, at least in terms of how much my blood pressure raises when I see it. Just the arrogance of it.

So I was very happy to see the above video on 101GG, where Heracles’ striker Everton gets his comeuppance for an unnecessary number of stepovers by being made to look very very foolish. (Please feel free to make your own jokes about Everton being embarrassed twice this week).

Everton’s useless trick can be classified as “too many stepovers”. He isn’t the first to do it, and he won’t be the last. But there are plenty of other crimes against football involving unnecessary skills. Selected YouTube highlights below, and please share any more that you know of in the comments.



The Rabona:
The rabona – where you cross one leg behind the other to play the ball – doesn’t prove that you have otherworldly talent. You might think it does. But what it actually proves is that you’re so one footed that you’d rather twist your legs into a pretzel than use your weaker foot. Which is why David Dunn deserved this:


Standing on the ball:
So far, I’ve only seen Andrei Kanchelskis do this. It accomplishes nothing except making you look silly, and possibly makes the ball egg-shaped.


360° spin (sans ball):
When Zinedine Zidane does a 360, he takes the ball with him and dizzies his opponent. Now that’s a trick. But Andrei Kanchelskis (yep, him again) does the 360 without the ball, thereby making himself dizzy instead.


Juggling for no reason:
I’m giving Kerlon and his seal dribble a pass here, mostly because it actually takes him past opposition players. But Nani’s infamous juggle against Arsenal actually took him in the wrong direction, towards his own goal. He got away with it, but it could very easily have gone very wrong.


Any more useless or unnecessary tricks and skills to add to this little collection? Let us know in the comments.


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  • ajay
    the 360 is the easily the best. haha had me fooled, NOT.
  • culè
    shouldn't football be entertaining, so why are you people against people who just try to entertain, i think football i more than just about winning it's also about entertaining the public on the stands
  • elle
    I honestly don't think he does.
  • Uh, Nani could have passed to many of the players open near him, which could have produced something. Instead, he got Man U a throw in close to their goal. That's REALLY useful. Elle: You think pissing people off is useful? If you don't want people to like you maybe...
  • elle
    Nani's wasn't useless..it totally pissed of the Arsenal players....which was exactly what it was supposed to do.
  • bertil
    Or this one from Richard Witschge (from 00:25):
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
  • star_bury
    @Drabik - Juggling to get away from a player is one thing. Juggling the 6 times afterwards was just arrogant.

    I'm also not a big fan of the heel-flick to redirect a cross into the net. The times it works (Zola for Chelsea) are greatly outnumbered by the times it doesn't....
  • E.T.
  • Drabik
    I dont think nani's juggling should be in this list. The others are clearly useless, whilst nani's skill allowed him to run clear of the player, have time to turn around and then dribble pass the player. If he let the ball fall to the ground, he may have been tackled more easily. Besides, it worked didn't it...
  • Wasn't there a Ronaldo (Fenômeno) video posted a few weeks ago where he was showing off his defender-dekeing skills and just ended up losing the ball?
  • Phil McThomas
    I've seen Gazza sit on the ball back in his Newcastle days. I think he got a card for he troubles.
  • Way back, during an international match, a Malawian player was shown a yellow card (possibly for making the ball egg-shaped) for standing on the ball. A free kick was awarded to the other team. Could be that he was given a yellow for putting his life in danger.
  • Yeah, These are hilarious. Kerlon (and Daniel Braaten for that matter) are actually good at the seal dribble, while Nani clearly is not.
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