Football has always had its innovators.
Johan Cruyff was the first player to do THAT turn. Antonin Panenka was the first footballer to take THAT extremely cheeky penalty. A random Sunday League team were presumably the first side to do that thing with a corner, where someone touches the ball with their foot and runs away like it hasn’t already been taken.
Presumably new Brentford manager Dean Smith thought he’d stumbled across a similarly revolutionary breakthrough when he devised his brand new free-kick tactic.
During the first half of his side’s 2-1 defeat at Birmingham City, Smith’s Bees got a free-kick roughly 30 yards from goal. Birmingham lined up their defensive wall, as every team does – and then brentford lined up two walls of their own.
The reason for having two walls of attackers between the ball and the defensive wall was not immediately apparent. Obscure the keeper’s view? Give free-kick taker Alan Judge something to aim at? Quite what the idea was, no-one is entirely sure.
So, will this new set-piece technique now be copied by teams across the land? Will we one day look back at Brentford’s attempt at Birmingham as a vital moment in footballing history?
Well, Judge’s shot from this famous free-kick flew wide… so probably not.
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Source: Mirror UK