Relive some wonderful strikes and memories

While thinking about United’s poor record of scoring from corners this season – only 4 goals from 246 corners or 1.46% compared to Man City’s 15 goals from 207 corners or 7.25% – I also realized that we haven’t seen many free kicks of real quality. Ryan Giggs’ effort against Tottenham being a rare gem.

Nani has scored from a free kick this season, but he was out of favour or out injured for big parts of this term. I’m not sure why Berbatov doesn’t step up to the plate and have a few punts, since he did take free kicks for Spurs, but maybe he feels he should be asked or invited.

Of course, I would prefer Man Utd not having to rely on goals from dead ball situations, but it can happen that United play well and deserve to win, but just can’t find the net, so they can come in handy. Besides the practicality of scoring from free kicks, they also are beautiful to watch. The aesthetic beauty of a ball bending over or around a wall and into the net is just breath-taking.

So having suffered a recent drought in goals from free kicks, I decided to take a trip down memory lane and check out some of the nicer United free kicks from recent times.

Not all of them were available online, but the usual suspects can be found.

Enjoy and feel free to share the ones I forgot to list.

Giggs vs Tottenham 09/10

Owen Hargreaves vs Arsenal

Ronaldo compilation

Beckham vs Real Madrid

(I apologize for the irritating commentary)

Beckham vs Barcelona

David Beckham compilation

Veron vs Bolton

Denis Irwin

He scored a few nice ones in his time. I could not find a compilation of his free kicks, so here’s a tribute clip.

The King vs Arsenal

What a thump!