Jules Rimet's bananas

Abstract

For a whole month from June 9 of this year civilised activity and conversation will be silenced by the quadrennial competition for association football's World Cup, the Jules Rimet trophy, in which 32 national teams will try to slot an air-filled plastic sphere through a rectangle measuring 2·4 by 7·2 m. This is not as easy as it sounds. For example, on Saturday, March 18, one-third of the sides competing in the top nine English and Scottish football leagues did not succeed once during 90 min of endeavour. Even with no goals and despite many unattractive features, on and off the field, this is still called “the beautiful game”. The wall set up against a direct free kick is anything but elegant, with its serried row of defenders blocking the straight path to goal and nervously protecting other sensitive sites with hands (when male) crossed below the waistband. There is a counter to this ploy, the banana kick, and recent research with real players and a virtual arena suggests that bent trajectories are very difficult to read. 1 Craig CM Berton E Rao G Fernandez L Bootsma RJ Judging where a ball will go: the case of the curved free kicks in football. Naturwissenschaften. 2006; 93: 97-101 Crossref PubMed Scopus (69) Google Scholar No doubt the better performers have always been able to make footballs, both moving and static, play tricks but the all-deceiving swerve became headline news in 1997 when a Brazilian called Roberto Carlos appeared to kick a ball so wide that a distant ballboy ducked—yet it landed in the net behind several stunned Frenchmen. The England captain, David Beckham, is another exponent. 2 Chadha G Bend it like Beckham [film]. Fox Searchlight Pictures, Los Angeles2002 Google Scholar