It tends to be an assertion of class – I am Paolo Di Canio and look what I can do – while its brilliance and effectiveness lies in its surprise factor, the thinking behind it being that it is almost impossible for a defender to take precautionary measures due to its uniqueness.

There are times when the rabona can seem like an unnecessary trick, the domain of players who are so one-footed that they will go to absurd lengths not to use the foot that is usually supposed to do nothing more than not fall off – it is debatable whether André Ayew needed to do one. At least I did one thing before all the others – now they call this move ‘rabona’ because Ronaldo did it, but Pelé himself said in an interview that he remembered an Italian doing it before him: that was me.”Īnd if you don’t believe him, here’s Roccotelli in action for Cagliari in a Serie B match against Fabio Capello’s old side, Spal, in 1976. When I was called up for a national side by Bearzot I remember that I even scored two goals this way in Campania. I began crossing like this when I was very little. “In every game the fans begged me to do it, they expected it,” Roccotelli said in an interview several years ago. Now he is known as “ Il padre della rabona” – the father of the rabona. When Roccotelli first started pulling one leg behind the other to cross the ball, it is said that it was called a “cross-kick”. These days the best players in the world are more than comfortable with pulling it off – YouTube could probably get by if it just had videos of Ricardo Quaresma’s efforts – but someone had to get there first. Yet while Roccotelli is not a household name, he is the inventor of one of the coolest tricks in football, the rabona.

There is a strong chance that you have never heard of him before, which would be understandable given that he had a solid but unspectacular career in Italy in the 70s and 80s, and yet this article really should be called The Joy of Six: Roccotellis. But spare a thought for Giovanni Roccotelli. Antonin Panenka introduced us to the chipped penalty, in France a powerful acrobatic volley is known as ‘ Une Papinade ’ after Jean Pierre-Papin and in England we have the famous Scott Parker 360-degree turn, the envy of the world, and the Ruddockian hoof. Cruyff is not the only player to have a move named after him.

Why does ronaldo do the rabona