We’ve heard of a panenka penalty but a panenka free-kick? This is just beautiful from Benfica’s Nicolas Gaitan.
Although it’s closer to the goal, free-kicks from right on the edge of the box are often far harder to convert than those taken from a few yards back; you’ll often hear commentators, for example, saying that *cliché alert* ‘it’s too close for Player X to get up and down from there’.
As a result, a rocket either to the side the ‘keeper is standing on or under a wall in the anticipation they might jump is often the preferred option, but Nicolas Gaitan had his own ideas during Benfica’s Europa League clash with PAOK Salonika last night.
Rather than go for power, he simply dinked it over the wall and though the ‘keeper might have made a better effort to scramble across, it was hit with such accuracy that he probably wouldn’t have got there in any case.
What a lovely, lovely goal.
Vine via Mostafa Soler
