Legendary Juninho Pernambucano is probably the best free-kick taker in the history. He scored 44 of 100 goals for Lyon from a free kick, and a total of 75 during his career. The Brazilian said for L’Equipe that Miralem Pjanic is the best free-kick taker today.
“It’s difficult to compare him to me, because I don’t like talking about myself too much, but Mire has incredible quality. He’s maybe the best free-kick taker in the world today. No I’m sure of it – he is the best,” said this 40-year-old Brazilian.
“He’s very efficient and above all consistent. That’s the most difficult part. He has a lot of variation in his strikes. He’s able to shoot in different ways depending on the distance. I imagine he’s working a huge amount. I said to him at the time that repetition of the action was the most important thing in order to become a great free-kick taker. It’s tiring but it’s really the most important part,” said Juninho, who hung up his shoes last year, and reminded himself how Pjanic learned from him.
“Mire was always interested in my shooting technique on free-kicks and by that exercise in particular. Unfortunately we didn’t rub shoulders with each other for very long because I left one year after he arrived from Metz in 2008. He always stayed with me after training for free-kick practice. We discussed things a lot,” said Juninho.
This season, Pjanic scored 4 goals from free kicks, three in Serie A and one in the Champions League.
(Source: klix.ba, espnfc.com)
