Cristiano Ronaldo left the Juventus stadium stunned with a bicycle kick goal. (Source: Reuters)
In the past 24 hours, some have wondered “what planet Cristiano Ronaldo hails from” while others have claimed he resembled a “martian in the sky”. Dissecting the goal that has elevated Ronaldo’s already gargantuan legacy to new heights:
The Physics
Potential energy: While football is mostly about kinetic energy, to pull off a bicycle kick, a players needs potential energy. It’s like rubber band pulled back.
Centrifugal force: Then there’s also the centrifugal force to contend with as he rotates his body to deliver the kick.
Gravity: To execute a bicycle kick, a footballer needs to have mightily strong thighs and legs. This power is required not only to propel himself off the ground but also to overcome the gravitional pull acting on him as he is suspended in the air. There’s also of course the matter of generating power to kick the ball into the back of the net like Ronaldo did on Tuesday.
Rotation: Studies reveal that to produce a magical overhead shot like Ronaldo did, his foot would have kicked the ball at a speed of nearly 300 revolutions per minute (rpm). That’s around the exact speed of a helicopter’s rotors—around 100 rpm slower than your washing machine at full tilt.
The Anatomy
The first motion is to lift your non-kicking foot up and propel your body off the kicking foot. Then comes the difficult part of bending your head and shoulders enough—like you’re reenacting a scene from Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon—as if to avoid the ball to pave the way for the kick. It’s then that the bicycle motion comes into play, as you lift the kicking foot over the other one to make contact with the ball. While pulling off these acrobatics, you also cannot take your eye of the ball till it’s left your foot. And you’ve a split second to pull the stunt off while also taking care of the landing—always better to stick your hands out to break the fall and aviod serious injury to the back or legs.
Then there’s Zlatan
And yet, after you’ve pulled it all off with absolute perfection like Ronaldo, you’ll still not have pleased everybody. There’ll always be a Zlatan Ibrahamovic reminding you that it still wasn’t as good as his. “It was a nice goal, but he should try it from 40 metres,” he said in his role as a football pundit, referring to his mind-boggling strike from that far out against a shocked England outfit back in 2012.