CELEBRITY
Video: How Budweiser Game of King ambassador Roberto Carlos shocked the world with famous free kick
On June 3, 1997, Roberto Carlos stunned the world with one of the most spectacular free kicks in football history.
The left-back scored the most famous goal of his career: an outrageous long-range free kick for Brazil in a 1-1 draw against France in the opening game of the 1997 Tournoi de France, a warm-up tournament ahead of the following year’s World Cup.
The strike left goalkeeper Fabien Barthez perplexed, as the ball apparently was heading well wide off the target and into the crowd.
However, it swerved back, glanced the inside edge of the post, and stopped only when it hit the net. Two decades later, Roberto Carlos says he is still impressed when he sees footage of his kick.
“To be honest, until this day I don’t know how I did that,” he told ESPN Brasil in 2017.
“It was a beautiful goal. It required a lot of training and hard work throughout my career.
“But that hard work paid off, as I was able to score such a wonderful goal, which was a special moment for me.”
When he scored that famous goal, the left-back was just starting his career.
He was in his second season for Real Madrid, and came to Spain after a short term at Inter Milan, who bought the young player from Brazilian champions Palmeiras for $8 million — a fortune in 1995.
In Madrid, he would win title after title, becoming an idol and a legend; his is still an international ambassador for Los Merengues.
While his star rose in the Spanish capital, he became Brazil’s starting left-back in the 1998, 2002 and 2006 World Cups. He won in South Korea/Japan in 2002 having been a runner-up in France four years earlier.
Roberto Carlos continued playing until 2015, when he retired after a short stint with Delhi Dynamos of the Indian Super League.
Throughout the 18 years that passed between his famous free kick against France and his retirement, Roberto Carlos never tried to strike the ball in the same way, as he knew it was practically impossible to repeat such perfection.
“I never tried to kick like that again, because I know I would never have scored,” he says with a laugh.
“There are lots of good kickers nowadays. It might take some time, but someday someone will score a similar goal. But I was the first.”
Roberto Carlos did recreate the kick (on a much smaller scale) in an Instagram post that went viral in 2019. Science, however, is not so sure that such a goal will be repeated in a match…
The impossible kick?
Roberto Carlos’ goal defied physics and still impresses scientists today.
When the famous free kick happened, physicists from all around the world were baffled by the images.
That goal was the catalyst for lots of studies and analysis about aerodynamics and the ball’s curve that day at the Stade de Gerland in Lyon.
One of the most famous studies was conducted by four French scientists — Guillaume Dupeux, Anne Le Goff, David Quere and Christophe Clanet — and published in the New Journal of Physics in September 2010.
In this study, the physicists conduct a series of experiments and analyses, which result in an equation that explains the ball’s trajectory and all the forces that were in action at that precise moment.
“The case of soccer, where ℒ is twice as small as L, is worth commenting on. The ball trajectory can deviate significantly from a circle, provided that the shot is long enough. Then the trajectory becomes surprising and somehow unpredictable for a goalkeeper,” they wrote.
“This is the way we interpret a famous goal by the Brazilian player Roberto Carlos against France in 1997.
This free kick was shot from a distance of approximately 35 metres, that is, comparable to the distance for which we expect this kind of unexpected trajectory.
Provided that the shot is powerful enough, another characteristic of Roberto Carlos’ abilities, the ball trajectory brutally bends towards the net, at a velocity still large enough to surprise the keeper.”
Dupeux, Le Goff, Quere and Clanet conclude that if the correct calculations were made, and the distances and forces were repeated, the famous goal could be replicated by another player.
This, however, is impossible, in the opinion of one of Brazil’s most important physicists. He describes Roberto Carlos’ masterpiece as a “football miracle”.
“Although physics explain perfectly the ball’s trajectory, the conditions in that moment, such as the power of the kick, the point of impact of Roberto Carlos’ foot on the ball, and the distance to the goal, were so rare that we can call that a miracle,” says professor Luis Fernando Fontanari of Sao Roberto Carlos Physics Institute, a branch of the University of Sao Paulo — the most respected university in the country.
Fontanari is one of the editors of “Physics of Life Reviews” and “Theory in Biosciences,” two of the most important scientific journals in the world.
He adds that, if the ball hadn’t stopped in the net, it would have continued in the air, drawing an incredible spiral trajectory, as the image above shows.
“I don’t believe that we will see something like that happening again,” Fontanari said.
Israeli scientist Erez Garty also theorised about Roberto Carlos’ kick. In a YouTube video, he gave a lesson for “physics dummies,” which explains the magic.
-ESPN
Former England soccer captain David Beckham and actor Gary Oldman were knighted in King Charles’ annual birthday honours list on Saturday, while sculptor Antony Gormley was made a Companion of Honour.
Beckham, 50, joined Manchester United as a trainee in 1993, going on to make almost 400 appearances for the club where he won a string of titles and cups.
He subsequently played for Real Madrid, LA Galaxy, and Inter Milan, as well as captaining his country 58 times and making 115 appearances.
His marriage to fashion designer and former Spice Girl Victoria Beckham in 1999 cemented a celebrity status which went far beyond his sporting exploits.
Oldman, 67, started his career on the stage, where he was a member of the Royal Shakespeare Company, before rising to prominence in film. He won the best actor Oscar for playing Winston Churchill in the 2017 drama “Darkest Hour”.
He also had roles in the “Dark Knight Trilogy” and the “Harry Potter” movie series and more recently starred in the TV spy drama “Slow Horses”.
Other famous names receiving honours included damehoods for musical theatre star Elaine Paige, novelist Pat Barker and ceramics maker Emma Bridgewater.
Roger Daltrey, lead singer of rock band the Who and a patron of the Teenage Cancer Trust, received a knighthood for services to charity.
More than 1,200 people received honours for their achievements, with a particular focus on those who had given their time to public service, the government said.
King Charles’ official birthday will be celebrated with the annual “Trooping the Colour” military parade in London on Saturday. His actual birthday is on November 14
-Reuters
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One of three judges in Diego Maradona’s closely scrutinized homicide trial in Argentina resigned on Tuesday amid a scandal triggered by the alleged filming of an unauthorised documentary, bringing uncertainty to the future of legal proceedings.
The high-profile trial over the death of soccer star Maradona began on March 11 in the South American country where the World Cup winner is still revered.
-Reuters
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For the third year in a row, and the fifth time overall, Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s highest-paid athlete.
But at age 40, the Portuguese soccer superstar is reaching new highs.
Over the past 12 months, counting both his playing salary at Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr and his off-field business endeavors, Ronaldo collected an estimated $275 million before taxes and agent fees—the third-best year by an active athlete ever measured by Forbes.
On that all-time list, Ronaldo is surpassed only by boxer Floyd Mayweather, who earned $300 million in 2015 and $285 million in 2018.
And when it comes to the 2025 leaderboard, Ronaldo has a $119 million advantage over No. 2, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.
The League of Wealthy Sportsmen
The gap is especially impressive considering that Curry’s $156 million total is also a record for his sport, beating the NBA mark of $128.2 million set last year by LeBron James.
And there are plenty of other eye-popping paydays among this year’s 10 highest-paid athletes, starting with James, who notched a personal-best $133.8 million to land at No. 6. Meanwhile, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (No. 4, $137million) and New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto (No. 7, $114 million) broke records for the NFL and MLB.
Combined, the 10 highest-paid athletes brought in $1.4 billion, up slightly from last year’s $1.38 billion and the largest total since Forbes began ranking athlete earnings in 1990.
This year is also only the second time, after 2024, that every member of the top 10 made at least $100 million.
In fact, heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk ($101 million) and golfer Jon Rahm ($100 million) reached the milestone, too, without managing to crack this list.
For the third year in a row, and the fifth time overall, Cristiano Ronaldo is the world’s highest-paid athlete.
But at age 40, the Portuguese soccer superstar is reaching new highs.
Over the past 12 months, counting both his playing salary at Saudi Arabia’s Al-Nassr and his off-field business endeavors, Ronaldo collected an estimated $275 million before taxes and agent fees—the third-best year by an active athlete ever measured by Forbes.
On that all-time list, Ronaldo is surpassed only by boxer Floyd Mayweather, who earned $300 million in 2015 and $285 million in 2018.
And when it comes to the 2025 leaderboard, Ronaldo has a $119 million advantage over No. 2, Golden State Warriors guard Stephen Curry.
The gap is especially impressive considering that Curry’s $156 million total is also a record for his sport, beating the NBA mark of $128.2 million set last year by LeBron James.
And there are plenty of other eye-popping paydays among this year’s 10 highest-paid athletes, starting with James, who notched a personal-best $133.8 million to land at No. 6. Meanwhile, Dallas Cowboys quarterback Dak Prescott (No. 4, $137million) and New York Mets outfielder Juan Soto (No. 7, $114 million) broke records for the NFL and MLB.
Combined, the 10 highest-paid athletes brought in $1.4 billion, up slightly from last year’s $1.38 billion and the largest total since Forbes began ranking athlete earnings in 1990.
This year is also only the second time, after 2024, that every member of the top 10 made at least $100 million.
In fact, heavyweight boxing champion Oleksandr Usyk ($101 million) and golfer Jon Rahm ($100 million) reached the milestone, too, without managing to crack this list.
World’s Highest-Paid Athletes 2025
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