I recently saw the movie Bend It Like Beckham. However, about all I know of soccer is that you want to kick the ball into the goal guarded by the other team. So can someone explain to me what the main character means when she says “No one can bend it like Beckham.” I know who David Beckham is but what is “bending it”?
WAG, but when a free kick (penalty kick?) is taken, the kicker (shooter?) will try to put a spin on the ball which makes it curve, or bend, making it more difficult to defend. Similar to a curveball thrown by a pitcher in baseball.
She probably means that his kicks are the hardest to defend since they bend so much, which is presumably what makes him great.
David Beckham is the England football (soccer) captain, and is famous for his trademark looping free-kicks.
Typically Beckham will take a free kick from 18-25 yards outside of the goal, often over to one side of the pitch, and is able to put such a prodigious spin on the ball that it curves through the air and is almost impossible to stop. It is extremely difficult to do this kind of thing consistently well, hence the aspiration to “Bend it like Beckham”: ie. to perfect the art of placing the ball exactly where you want it to go.
In the English game Beckham is recognised as one of (if not, the) best exponents of free-kicks. Other top free-kick specialists in world soccer include Roberto Carlos (Brasil) and Gianfranco Zola (Italy).
Beckham recently completed a high profile move to Spanish club Real Madrid, and his first goal for his new club this week was a perfect example of his physics-defying free-kicks.
Could this be related to bending the ball around the “wall” of defending players, when a direct free kick is taken? (Direct free kick means you’re allowed to take a shot at goal with it; the opposing players line up and form a “wall” to block the ball, usually with their hands protecting their crotch.) I seem to remember the Brazilians excel at that too.
Oh good, I was wondering what BILB had meant.
Casey’s on the right track…
Beckham excels at free kicks outside the box, (penalty kicks are taken from 12 yards with no defenders in between).
His equaliser against Greece in the qualifier for the last World Cup was a good example.
The best I’ve ever seen was Roberto Carlos for Brazil against France four or five years back, which left everybody (including French keeper Barthez) thinking ‘how did that go in’… well worth a watch if you can find it.
Did you enjoy the film?
“The British are coming!” - Colin ‘Notnostrodamas’ Welland
An animated graphic of this goal can be found on the BBC site here.
In this case the bend that beckham put on the ball was important because it prevented the Goalkeeper from accurately guessing where the ball was going. By the time the curl was obvious, the keeper was too far away to be able to get a hand to it.