The graphics are laid out and printed on A4. They are slipped into plastic sheets and placed in files. Corner kicks. Dead-ball routines. Designs that have defined this season in football, making celebrities out of specialist coaches, their impact so outsized they have become almost as prominent as head coaches.
The discourse around set pieces has changed accordingly. Whenever they are brought up in the context of today’s game, it’s about the quality of the delivery, the block on the goalkeeper, a push on the back of a defender, a training-ground routine well-executed. The conversation is hardly ever about a free-kick shot. A curler. A daisy-cutter. A kiss on the underside of the bar. A goal of the year.
Goals from direct free kicks feel less remarked upon because they are less of an occurrence, less of a feature of modern football. It used to be that this skill marked a player out as exceptional: Diego Maradona, Michel Platini, Lionel Messi. It used to be an art form mastered by the few: Juninho Pernambucano, Andrea Pirlo, Sinisa Mihajlovic. A rare ability that has become rarer still.
And so when Atletico Madrid’s Julian Alvarez lifted a free kick over the Barcelona wall and into the net on Wednesday, just out of the reach of goalkeeper Joan Garcia, it was a timely and welcome reminder that this dying art is not dead. How many of them do we see these days? Not nearly enough.
Garcia dives for and fails to save Alvarez’s free-kick shot (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)
“Julian scored a golazo,” Atletico manager Diego Simeone said.
It was one of those nights at the now Spotify-sponsored Camp Nou when you wanted to press the yellow logo in the stands, rewind 15 seconds and hit play again.
There was a series of caños (nutmegs) from the home side’s Lamine Yamal on Matteo Ruggeri; a flick through the legs here, a pass between them there. Each one elicited a roar from the crowd like he was a bullfighter, evading horns and steaming nostrils.
When Yamal got away from Ruggeri and squared the ball for a Marcus Rashford tap-in, the offside flag and subsequent ruling-out of the goal didn’t stop Simeone from haranguing his defender for failing to stop the apparently unstoppable. “For your country, he will be one of your best players ever, in all history, so you need to support him,” Barca coach Hansi Flick said afterwards of Spanish teenager Yamal. On the night, Argentina’s Alvarez just about upstaged the 18-year-old.
The free-kick goal wasn’t only the finest moment of individual quality so far in this season’s Champions League quarter-finals. What made it special was how it came about in the first place.
Atletico had nowhere to go. Barcelona pressed them so high, they were practically in the stands. Ruggeri tried to clear Atletico’s lines, hoping the ball would relieve some of the pressure on his team. Everyone expected Barcelona to win the second ball and get back on the attack. Instead, Alvarez was making them run backwards.
“Julian played a ball over my shoulder,” right-winger Giuliano Simeone said. “I knew I was the last man. I didn’t watch it back, but I cut in front of (Pau Cubarsi), went through on goal and felt the contact.” Referee Istvan Kovacs initially booked Cubarsi. But the VAR, Christian Dingert, called him to the monitor. “I think the VAR was very focused in Atletico’s favour. It was a German guy. So, thanks a lot to Germany,” Flick, who is also German, commented bitterly.
Kovacs changed his decision, Cubarsi received his marching orders, and Alvarez, who provoked them, stood over the resulting free kick. Momentarily, it was of some consolation to the crowd at the Camp Nou that a penalty wasn’t awarded. Only, Alvarez made the free kick look like one.
The 26-year-old has scored seven free kicks since he moved to Europe, initially to Manchester City from River Plate in his homeland four years ago. Only one player in the so-called top five European domestic leagues has had more success, and that’s a former Barcelona B-team player, Alejandro Grimaldo, now of Bayer Leverkusen in Germany, with 10.
Apart from Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai (six) and Bruno Fernandes of Manchester United (four), the other dependables from free-kick shots aren’t exactly big names; we’re talking Vincenzo Grifo (Germany’s Freiburg), Nadiem Amiri (also in the Bundesliga at Mainz), Cristiano Biraghi (Torino of Italy), Florian Lejeune (Rayo Vallecano in Spain)… It’s a far cry from the days when the ability to conjure show-stopping moments from free kicks like Alvarez’s last night felt like a prerequisite for any Ballon d’Or contender.
Cristiano Ronaldo understood this. It’s why he took so many of them, even when the evidence suggested he’d be better off leaving free kicks to others, like Paulo Dybala or Miralem Pjanic when they were together at Juventus, both of whom were far superior at them.
Alvarez’s goal, his fifth of the 2025-26 Champions League’s knockout stages, recalled his knack for seizing the moment. He came alive when the games got bigger at the 2022 World Cup and is doing the same now.
This was no small feat. Barcelona had won each of their 14 home games since moving back into the renovated Camp Nou in November. But that ended on Wednesday night.
Atletico were clinical as they won 2-0. They had only one more shot on target after the hosts went down to 10 men. The substitute Alexander Sorloth turned in a cross from Ruggeri to double the lead on 70 minutes. The Norwegian is something of a nemesis to Barcelona. This was his eighth career goal against the Catalans in 14 meetings, and it clinched Atletico’s first win at the Camp Nou in more than 20 years.
“We knew that the situation they create with their high defensive line, which they work well, hurt them in almost every match we played,” Simeone said.
Sortloth scores Atletico’s second (Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images)
At full time, the Argentinian dressed in all-black sprinted down the long tunnel to the dressing rooms. Up in the away end, the fans behind the smeared and smudged plexiglass chanted for him to come back out with his players. They wanted to serenade Alvarez. The dejected Barcelona supporters want to see him perform at the Camp Nou again, too. Next time, as one of them.
Asked if he could guarantee Alvarez will still be an Atletico player next season, the club’s president Enrique Cerezo answered: “Can you guarantee you’re not going to die between now and the end of the year?”
Simeone also refused to guarantee Atletico are already through, even if the last time they reached the Champions League final 10 years ago, they just so happened to eliminate Barcelona in this round. It feels scripted. Almost like a set-piece routine.
Whatever the narrative arc, the off-the-cuff artistry of that free kick against Barcelona is a reminder that nobody can draw a scheme better than the picture a player as good as Alvarez already has in his head.