Bend, curl and drop: How Declan Rice’s scientifically precise free-kicks led Arsenal to famous win over Real Madrid | Football News

In his schooldays, Declan Rice used to linger around the ground after the practice sessions and hit a thousand balls towards the empty nets to chisel his shooting range to perfection.When he reached home, he would take the ball, whichever his eyes found, be it a tennis ball, basketball or a football, and sneak into the backyard. “I just always had a ball to hand or foot, whether it was a tennis ball, a basketball or a football, I was always picking it up and smashing it,” he writes in England Football.
the age of seven, he was already on the rolls of Chelsea’s academy. But he turned up for the neighbourhood club and school team every single week, racking up nearly 200 games a year. “Those were good places to try out what I had learnt at the academy, kind of a practical lab,” he reminisces. Also because feeling the ball on boots was the most pleasurable feeling of his life.
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A decade into his professional career, his eyes still light up with the enthusiasm of the simple child from Kingston upon Thames in London. His first touch, the most exclusive and inaccessible of all football skills, is a sight of dilled beauty; the ball seems to breathe peace when it reaches the instep of Rice and drops within the shadow of his studs.
He treats the ball with care and love, strokes rather than sweeps it, the weight milligram perfect, path millimetre precise. It’s apt that he was straightaway installed as a central midfielder, who would be called to touch the ball more often than others. It was strange, though, that such a sublime baller wasn’t the team’s most trusted dead-ball exponent.
It is no fault of his, though. West Ham United, his first club, had club cult-heroes Jarrod Bowen and Mark Noble. When he joined Arsenal for a record English fee, Bukayo Saka and Martin Odegaard had already staked their claims. Rice is so exemplary at multiple roles, conducting the midfield orchestra and conceiving the perfect pass, filling up for vacant spaces when the defenders move upfront and making last-second tackles and clearances, that managers would have felt guilty in overburdening him.
But here he was, at the nervous cauldron of Emirates, seizing destiny with twin free-kick bullets that turned the stadium into a planet of bedlam. A shocking excitement exploded when someone who had never scored with a free kick in 338 competitive games chose the grand stage of a Champions League quarterfinal against the competition’s most storied club, Real Madrid.

Two special Declan Rice free-kicks Lautaro golazo Merino first-time finish @Heineken | #UCLGOTD pic.twitter.com/y8YpK7iC1e
— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) April 8, 2025
Bound to succeed
In reality, though, he was always bound to succeed. As he later explained, it was the shape of the Madrid wall, just four men screening the goalkeeper Thibaut Courtois, as opposed to the usual five, that sparked the quick-witted Rice’s imagination to screech the ball around the wall with just enough swerve to bring the ball a couple of centimetres back inside the near post.Story continues below this ad
Every aspect of the howitzer aligned with scientific precision — the bend, curl and the drop. Watching awe-struck from the stands was Roberto Carlos, a free-kick virtuoso himself.
Behind the wondrous goal shone a simple yet brilliant technique. He runs diagonally into the ball, whereas most of the fine exponents run from 30-45 degrees, or as in the case of Carlos, straight. The run-up that starts with a hop, as though he is shivering, is short. Just four measures strides, each one longer than the other so that he works a nice momentum. He does not pause near the ball as some do to make a late adjustment, but goes through with the impetus.
The wide angle of his run-up means that he can open up the body a lot more and, importantly, let the standing leg (his left) lean away from the ball, which clears the path for the free swing of his right foot and the stability to balance his body. It ensures he can transfer more power through the ball. He doesn’t hit the ball with the instep, but rather a few centimetres ahead of it, closer to the inside arch of the ball. The leg is almost straight when he hits the ball, which gives him optimum control over the shot. The snap of the ankle at the last second imparts swerve and dip. The landing is frictionless, an ode to his upper body strength and balance.
The thunderbolt froze Madrid. Then lightning struck twice, twelve minutes after the first. The free-kick, courtesy again Saka’s nifty feet. was more towards the centre. The Belgian goalkeeper deliberately left a gap on the left side, thinking that Rice would aim for the near post. But this time, he ripped the ball through the heart of the wall, his teammates hugging the Madrid wall scattering like pigeons on gunshot to clear the path for his shot to ruffle the nets past a helplessly flailing Courtois.Story continues below this ad
The second free kick was more powerful, with more vicious zip and dip. It was the night he worked out the world’s best goalkeeper like a cameraman works a model. And then he struck the pose for the world to capture his soaring greatness. Those crushed Madrid, who now require a near-miracle at Santiago Bernabeu to resurrect their Champions League defence. Those thousand balls a session were worth all the time and energy.