The art of the trick corner kick. Wayne Rooney goes over like he’s going to take the corner but instead, cleverly, puts the ball on the line for the corner and then rolls it into play with the bottom of his foot. Ryan Giggs saunters over, acting like he’s going to now take the proper corner kick but turns and dribbles the soccer ball towards goal and serves in a quick cross which Cristiano Ronaldo heads home at the near post.
Chelsea was caught unawares and on their back foot, but the goal is disallowed. The linesman doesn’t realize what had happened, that Rooney put the ball into play when he first came over to take the corner. Fortunately, Manchester scores shortly thereafter. The question too many was, should Rooney have told the linesman that he was playing the ball in, or did he even have to tell him? I don’t think he had to say anything. In the post game interview Alex Ferguson said the trick corner kick was planned.
Of course, this wasn’t the first time this type of corner kick as been tried in a soccer game. Here’s another version of this corner kick play, this time by Mladen Petric and Ivan Rakitic, two Croatian footballers playing for French side Basel. They go right at goal after they pull off the trick corner kick.
In the MLS, the New York Red Bulls pulled off a trick corner kick by, it looks like, moving the ball just outside the area of the corner kick and then having another player run over and dribble off with the ball.
Never forget this brilliant trick corner from the New York Red Bulls 😳👏 pic.twitter.com/iL9eIcAsyT
— ESPN FC (@ESPNFC) November 4, 2021
It’s hard to see it clearly in this video, but that appears to be what the Red Bulls did. The linesman is right there and knows what the players did too. This trick corner results in a goal, by surprising the other team.
Soccer is actually made up of a lot of trick plays or set plays – patterns of play that you use throughout the game. Some of the best ones are pretty simple, like the wall pass or even a counter attack.
