Juventus were paired with Lyon in Nyon’s draw for the quarter-finals of the Europa League. Juve, who appear well on track to defend their Serie A title, are aiming for a European and Italian “double” after having eliminated Fiorentina in the round of 16, while the French side are not the team that used to be a contender for the Champions League anymore, and currently sit in fifth place in Ligue 1.

 

The matchup should be an interesting one, although the matchup within the matchup that we’ll never see, is probably the one for which everyone would have paid the ticket.

 

When thinking about the two teams, the first picture that comes to the mind of most nostalgic fans is that of last decade's most influential free kick masters Andrea Pirlo and Juninho Pernambucano. Unfortunately, due to Juninho’s last January retirement (though he left Lyon in 2009 anyways), the next quarter-final leg will not see the two genius midfielders face each other.

Nevertheless, we would like to imagine how the match would have been with just the two of them on the pitch, and a goalkeeper and maybe a wall of four to five players. We drew up a detailed analysis of their major free kick qualities in terms of power, accuracy and range, and the winner is…well, not so fast! 

Power. The two midfielders are poles apart in this category. Each of them has his own style of kicking the ball: for instance this characteristic would probably be Andrea Pirlo’s less effective feature whereas for Juninho, this would be his strongest weapon. By looking at the video, the majority of goals scored by Pirlo from long distance are divine kisses from heaven with pure class. His trajectories are colorful brush strokes, for this reason most of the times he doesn’t need much force to reach the goal. On the other side, Juninho’s free kicks are just absolute shooting stars of accurate inertia. Power is surely the main ingredient of his recipe. His original way of shooting allows the ball to acquire such a powerful speed that most of the times it changes its direction before reaching the goal. [Andrea Pirlo score 7/10 - Juninho score 9/10]

Accuracy. That's a common quality, especially for these genius midfielders. It is very hard to imagine a free kick master lacking in accuracy. In fact neither of them does. The Italian star mastered accuracy over the years by studying Roberto Baggio’s trajectories at Brescia in the early 2000s. He started playing as a playmaker before joining Milan and started drawing long passes for his teammates. Andrea Pirlo manages to put the ball anywhere he wants from every single spot. Probably an even better mix of power and accuracy is Juninho Pernambucano’s. The legend has it that he kicks the ball by keeping his body steady and straight while kicking on the football’s valve. But of course not even the Gods of football know if this is true or not. Luckily, we managed to witness his masterpieces. [Andrea Pirlo score 9,5/10 - Juninho 9/10]

 

Range. It seems like short-range free kicks are too easy for Juninho. He just “hates” scoring from a distance that is not at least 30 meters from the goal. Most of his goals come from a variety of “unknown” distances. But what is it that makes the Brazilian veteran the best long-shot specialist? By the year 2012/2013 (before his official retirement), Juninho was known to have scored about 75 free kicks in his career mostly from long distance. That is, a clever fusion of power and precision. Talking about Andrea Pirlo instead, his portfolio of distance range is much wider. His accurate touch is often essential. Recently, the Italian even added a new weapon to his arsenal, with a cunning daisy-cutter to fool a jumping defensive wall managing to shoot from every angle of the pitch. Andrea Pirlo can be grateful to Mother Nature for bestowing him such talent. [Andrea Pirlo 10/10 - Juninho 9/10

 

Making the difference. Ever since Juninho and Andrea Pirlo first appeared in the professional football scene, we’ve seen them score from every corner and angle of the pitch. However, how important were these goals in terms of making the difference during a football match? A part from the spectacular moves, were they winning goals as well?

Becoming the man of the match after scoring the winning goal from a free-kick is surely a feeling that Andrea Pirlo has experienced often in his recent past. Overall, the Italian international was probably the key in a bigger number of matches especially in recent games such as in Genoa-Juventus and Fiorentina-Juventus of the Europa League. While Juninho’s free-kicks were crucial in a few games of the French League, although he showed three gems in Champions League against the most famous Spanish sides and Bayern Munich. His 2005-2006 shot against Real Madrid travelled at 126 km/h. Two years later, he scored from 43 meters at Barcelona. [Andrea Pirlo 9/10 - Juninho 8,5/10]

Well, there's no winner after all: 35.5 each. Do you agree? 

 

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