Julian Alvarez's Atletico free-kick in Barcelona win was a reminder that the dying art is not dead

AlavésAthletic ClubAtlético MadridBarcelonaCelta de VigoElcheEspanyolGetafeGironaLevanteMallorcaOsasunaRayo VallecanoReal BetisReal MadridReal OviedoReal SociedadSevillaValenciaVillarrealPodcastsCopa del ReyAnalysisJulian Alvarez’s Atletico free-kick in Barcelona win was a reminder that the dying art is not deadAlvarez scored a free-kick as Atletico Madrid beat Barcelona 2-0 Josep Lago/AFP via Getty Images Share full articleThe 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 the defender, a training ground routine well-executed. The conversation is hardly ever about a free-kick. 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 the game. 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, 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. “Julian scored a golazo,” Diego Simeone said. It was one of those nights at the Spotify 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 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 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,” Hansi Flick said. On the night, Argentina’s Alvarez just about upstaged him. The free-kick wasn’t only the finest moment of individual quality in the 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,” 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.” The 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,” Flick commented bitterly. “It was a German guy, so thanks a lot to Germany.” Kovacs changed his decision, Cubarsi received his marching orders, and Alvarez, who provoked them, stood over the 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 from River Plate in 2022. Only one player in the so-called top five leagues has had more success, and that’s a former Barcelona B player, Alejandro Grimaldo, now of Bayer Leverkusen, with 10. Apart from Dominik Szoboszlai (six) and Bruno Fernandes (four), the other dependables from free-kicks aren’t exactly big names; we’re talking Vincenzo Grifo, Nadiem Amiri, Cristiano Biraghi, Florian Lejeune…It’s a far cry from the days when the ability to conjure show-stopping moments from free-kicks like Alvarez’s felt like a prerequisite for any Ballon d’Or contender. Cristiano Ronaldo understood this. It’s why he took so many, even when the evidence suggested he’d be better off leaving free-kicks to others, like Paulo Dybala or Miralem Pjanic at Juventus, both of whom were far superior at them. Alvarez’s goal, his fifth of the Champions League knock-out 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 games since moving back into the Camp Nou. 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. The Norwegian is something of a nemesis to Barcelona. This was Sorloth’s eighth goal against the Catalans, 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. At full-time, the Argentine in all-black sprinted down the mile-long tunnel to the dressing room. Up in the away end, the fans behind the smeared and smudged plexiglass chanted for him to come back with the players. They wanted to serenade Alvarez. The dejected Barcelona supporters want to see him play 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 final, they just so happened to eliminate Barcelona in the quarters. It feels scripted. Almost like a set-piece. Whatever the narrative arc, the off-the-cuff artistry of that free-kick against Barcelona is a reminder that no one can draw a scheme better than the picture a player as good as Alvarez already has in his head. Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms James Horncastle covers Serie A for The Athletic. He joins from ESPN and is working on a book about Roberto Baggio. Follow James on Twitter @JamesHorncastle