When watching football it is easy to assess performance in terms of goals, assists (the final pass before a goal) and tackles.  But the real value of a player is often the pieces of play that are not so easily noticed.

Gaizka Mendieta scored the best goal you haven’t seen in the 33^rd minute of the 1999 Copa del Rey Cup Final between Valencia CF and Atletico Madrid.

Bayern Munich’s Robert Lewandowski’s 5 clinical goals in just 9 minutes against Bundesliga rivals VfL Wolfsburg was one of the spectacular individual footballing performances of 2015.

Little would the Wolfsburg defenders have known that a dog had a role in giving Lewandowksi the speed and technique that he has today.

Back to the 30s
Any nation capable of beating Germany 6-0 and 5-0, Italy 2-1, Belgium 6-1, France 4-0 and Hungary 8-2 is clearly one of the very best teams in the world.

Between 1931-33 these results did occur.  The team that did the destroying was called the wunderteam.  Any guesses on who the nation was?

ACF Fiorentina In Winter
As New Zealanders enjoy their summer holiday, the Top Flight Football Academy strategic partners Soccer Italian Style are in the middle of their winter break.

“When people talk about my free kicks they focus on the goals.  But when I think about free kicks I think about all those failures.  It took tons of misses before I got it right.”

During his career David Beckham was one of the best dead ball specialists in the world.