Physicists have explained one of football's most spectacular goals.
Brazilian Roberto Carlos's 1997 free kick against France curved so sharply that it left goalkeeper Fabian Barthez standing still and looking puzzled.
Now, a study published in the New Journal of Physics suggests that the long-held assumption that the goal was a fantastic fluke is wrong.
A French team of scientists discovered the trajectory of the goal and developed an equation to describe it.
They say it could be repeated if a ball was kicked hard enough, with the appropriate spin and, crucially, the kick was taken sufficiently far from goal.
When asked if they could find a similar explanation for the shot which squirmed out of England keeper Robert Green's hands in the World Cup finals against the USA, the scientists , however, concluded that either "the player's gloves had been inadvertently exposed to an excessive amount of an oil type substance" or that he "was simply crap".
