The Premier League has seen a number of free-kick masters emerge in its 32-year history,
none more so than David Beckham, who can take down opponents in a variety of ways from dead-ball situations.
Before the start of the 2024/25 Premier League season, the Inter Miami boss is still the league’s greatest free-kick taker.
So far this season, Beckham has scored 18 goals from direct free-kicks.
That’s not counting goals scored in other competitions such as the European Cup and domestic cups, bringing the total to 22 goals.
Not only is Beckham effective, he also executes them with style, with the spin and danger of each ball.
Beckham could have scored more free-kicks had he not moved to Real Madrid, and although he remains No. 1, he is under threat from James Ward-Prowse.
Ward-Prowse has scored 17 Premier League free-kicks and is just two short of the record. If he does, no one will catch him, as he is the only one in the top 10 currently playing.
Ward-Prowse has made fans of other Premier League clubs fear him when he stands in front of the ball from free-kicks. But that was at Southampton, and Ward-Prowse has yet to score a goal from a free-kick at West Ham, despite taking corners much better than before and providing assists from them. It is unclear what Ward-Prowse’s problem is at West Ham, but West Ham’s free-kick numbers are generally quite low compared to Southampton’s.
There are three players with 12 goals from free-kicks: Thierry Henry, Gianfranco Zola and Cristiano Ronaldo. They are all great free-kick specialists, but Henry is rated the “worst” of them because a lot of his free-kick goals were from surprise shots before the goalkeeper was ready. Zola often curled the ball over the wall to the top corner, while Ronaldo in the Premier League is famous for his Knuckleball style.
Ronaldo could have broken Beckham’s record if he hadn’t moved to Real Madrid because he scored 7 goals from free-kicks in his first 2 seasons in La Liga. However, the design of the ball has changed, making Ronaldo less and less effective as he still uses the knuckleball style to this day. Ronaldo’s 9% success rate in the Premier League is still better than just 6% in La Liga, but that rate is just a “mosquito” compared to Ward-Prowse (13.2%).
Not only Ronaldo, Laurent Robert played for only 4 and a half seasons but still had long-range “cannons” for Newcastle to reach the milestone of 11 goals, equal to Sebastian Larsson while Larsson played for 14 years in England. The final two in the top 10 are Morten Gamst Pedersen, who seems to score a goal of the month nomination every month for Blackburn Rovers, and former full-back Ian Hart, who beat Arsenal 3-2 at the end of the 2002/03 season with a free-kick to keep Leeds in the Premier League.
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Source: USA Today
