I was watching Bend it like Beckham recently after a while, and I kept wondering about all this unfair hype about Beckham and his bender-freekicks. He’s certainly not the greatest bender-freekicker of his time. Here, watch this freekick by Roberto Carlos....


From a purely projectile-motion physics' perspective ( on a roll with my alliteration here...), watch the trajectory of Carlos’ kicking leg, the follow-through with his body, the cramped space between the right post and the goalie that he has to work with and of course, the trajectory of the ball. Makes one wonder as to why we design such sophisticated control systems to guide the trajectory of missiles and drones. Why not let Carlos and his Clones kick the missiles off literally. It’s as if he has a tracking system embedded in the ball with the exact path he had imagined in his mind...

I only hope that when they make a sequel to Bend it like Beckham, they’d name it Kick it like Karlos... (I know but alliteration is an important requirement for a movie title in this series)