Rarely has a 0-0 draw at a World Cup been so eagerly anticipated… and then celebrated.

When the full-time whistle blew in Atlanta on Monday morning it was clear we had all just witnessed something significant. Tournament debutants Cape Verde had held reigning European champions Spain to a goalless draw, a result that — frankly — no-one had seen coming.

It’s a scoreline that immediately places it into the pantheon of World Cup shocks, but is it possible to dig a bit deeper and work out just how much a surprise it is that a team from a small set of Macaronesian islands was able to thwart one of soccer’s leading nations? We gave it a go.

How Cape Verde did it

First of all let’s examine how Pedro Leitao Brito’s side stymied the Spanish, in a game that followed a predictable pattern, as Spain dominated possession and pushed Cape Verde back with relentless passing and pressure. By the end, Luis De La Fuente’s side had completed 400 passes in the attacking third, to their opponent’s… eleven.

But Cape Verde simply did not wilt in a solid, switched-on 4-5-1 defensive shape, compressing space between the lines and defending heroically in their own penalty area to keep the European Champions at bay, and committing only one foul in the process — the fewest ever recorded in a World Cup game.

Given the chasm in individual quality, they had little choice but to drop deeper at times and soak up Spanish attacks. But this was not a completely passive defensive performance from Bubista’s men, looking to spring out of midfield and hassle the ball up the pitch whenever the opportunity arose.

The image below helps to illustrate the general pattern throughout what must have been an exhausting second half. With Spain prepared to commit so many players forward, often leaving six across the front line, they ensured they remained solid in the centre of the pitch, blocking out passes to the dangerous Pedri and Fabian Ruiz in advanced areas and keeping that yellow area as small as possible.

It often left passes out wide to advancing full-backs, but when the ball was floated over, Cape Verde moved as a collective to close down, passing players on and clogging up the flanks to ensure progress was stopped.

On the occasions that Spain did break through, they were able to rely on colossal last-ditch defending from centre-backs Pico Lopes and Diney Borges. Goalkeeper Vozinha, meanwhile, 40 years of age, made seven crucial saves.

As we can see from the visualisation below, both central defenders made at least six clearances in their own penalty area. Lopes notably threw himself in front of a Mikel Oyarzabal volley with just moments to go, a prime example of the back-four’s commitment to defend their goal.

Not only without the ball, their were moments of real quality when Cape Verde recovered possession, zipping the ball around the Spanish pressure and often looking to play their way out with short passes into midfield. With a little more composure and splitting quality on the final pass, they may have made one of their rare forays forward count.

But this is a result that Cape Verde will remember for generations, and a performance that will give them confidence that they can compete with Saudi Arabia and Uruguay in what now looks a much more open group.

How big a shock is it?

How do you objectively assess a World Cup shock, a seismic sporting event that is so reliant on cultural and historic context, as several of The Athletic’s writers illustrated earlier today.

But there are ways of assessing it with cold hard figures, most notably the FIFA world rankings, which began in the 1990s as a way to assess the strength of international teams. Using the historic numbers, we can see that Cape Verde avoiding to defeat to Spain rates as the fourth biggest rankings gap between underdog and favorite.

It’s arguable Cape Verde could be even higher. South Africa defeating France in 2010 was undoubtedly a shock, but they were the host nation, a position that tends to give a nation a few extra percentage points in their favour. Hosting a tournament is also an indication you are not truly a tiny nation — South Africa, despite that win, and their draw with Mexico in the opening game were unfortunate not to get out of the group with four points, but they hosted a 32-team World Cup with relative ease. Will Cape Verde ever host a World Cup? No, they will not.

The example of New Zealand drawing with Italy in 2010 is a better comparison with Cape Verde drawing with Spain. The Italians were the reigning world champions at this point, yet could not defeat the team ranked 78th in the world at the time, leading to outrage in the Italian press. ‘Indigestible Kiwis’ was the headline in the Corriere della Sera.

Perhaps a fairer way is to look at landmass, already a popular metric at the 2026 World Cup thanks to the appearance of several small debutants. And if we do that then Cape Verde have indeed made history, becoming the smallest nation to gain a point at a World Cup, beating Trinidad and Tobago who got a 0-0 draw with Sweden in 2006. Curacao could yet steal this title from Cape Verde this summer, though they will have to defend more effectively than they did in their opening game with Germany, a 7-1 defeat. That many people expected a similar sort of scoreline in Cape Verde’s game with Spain is perhaps the biggest testament to what they achieved on Monday.

What does this mean for the rest of the tournament?

The Athletic’s projection model still expects Spain to progress, though their chances of winning the group fell from 81 percent to 68 percent after Monday’s draw. More significantly, Cape Verde’s chances of progressing to the round of 32 have gone up from 32 percent to 52 percent — a significant increase.

The main implication for Spain is that they now have an increased chance of facing Argentina in the round of 32.

The South African and New Zealand examples cited above saw both nations exit in the group stages (New Zealand were famously the only team to remain unbeaten at the 2010 World Cup) with points totals — four and three respectively — that almost certainly would have seen them progress in the 2026 format.

This summer’s romance with Cape Verde may only just be starting.

Outside, chants against the regime and the team. Inside, roars of support for the players. Cheers when Iran scored to twice come from behind to draw 2-2 with New Zealand.

There were thousands of Iranian flags in the stands. From a distance they looked identical. Up close, they told a different story.

Some carried the official flag of the Islamic Republic. Others displayed the Lion and Sun. All were dressed in Iran’s colours.

This is what the footballers were up against: Iran versus Iran.

“It’s complicated,” says Samaneh, an Iranian-American who has lived in the United States for a decade.

“I’m here to support Iran, not the regime. I miss my country.”

She said she cried when Iran’s national anthem played.

“My dad is here, but my mum is stuck in Iran because of paperwork and President Trump’s travel restrictions. I’m worried about her all the time. I’m also scared to go back and visit.”

The contradictions were visible throughout the match.

When New Zealand took the lead, some anti-regime spectators celebrated, waving Lion and Sun flags.

Outside the stadium, the politics quickly came back into focus.

“We don’t want a deal,” says Nini, referring to the latest agreement between Washington and Tehran to end the war between the US and Iran.

“The people of Iran deserve regime change. People were slaughtered on the streets of Tehran.”

“We can’t normalise what happened in January through a sporting event,” says Farimah, who is wearing a T-shirt bearing the Lion and Sun emblem.

“This team doesn’t represent the people of Iran.”

Nearby, Kourosh stands with a makeshift noose around his neck.

“It’s a symbol to stop the execution of brave and innocent people in Iran,” he says.

Like many here, he says the players on the pitch represent the regime, not the people.

The players reject that characterisation.

Before the match, striker Mehdi Taremi said the team plays for all Iranians, at home and abroad, and does not get involved in politics.

Some supporters heading into the stadium agreed.

Despite the tensions between his adopted and native countries, Iranian-American Mostafa believes football should unite people.

“Soccer is about friendship, cultural connections and putting politics aside,” he adds on his way into the stadium.

From the Cruyff and Maradona turns to the elastico, rainbow flicks and a piece of skill named after a tapas dish, it’s time for some individual flair.

We are talking about the dribbling moves and the clever turns that enable players to deceive and outwit an opponent, bringing a mixture of freedom and fun to the football pitch, and entertaining team-mates as much as the supporters at times.

There’s the stepover loved by the two Ronaldos (Cristiano and Nazario, the original from Brazil), the two-touch turn that took off on a video game, and the hocus pocus skill that humiliated one Brazil legend and earned another a free meal.

But where and when did these moves first surface, which players are most likely to produce them at this summer’s World Cup and, most importantly, how can you learn to do them?

To walk and talk you through that process as part of The Athletic’s How To Series, we’ve got YouTuber and content creator Eman SV2, the king of the showboat Lee Trundle, former Premier League midfielder Tom Davies, and 14-year-old Liverpool academy player Rafferty Bolshaw…

Stepover

The first thing to say is that Trundle is wearing the perfect boots to demonstrate — the Nike Mercurial R9. Ronaldo — the Brazilian Ronaldo, that is — loved a stepover and would often use it to go past a goalkeeper as well as defenders.

Ronaldo + Stepovers = A Lethal Combination! 🇧🇷😵‍💫#FIFAWorldCup | @Ronaldo pic.twitter.com/FaVDj98c43

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) June 27, 2024

The clue is in the name here — you’re stepping over the ball, feinting to go one way and then, with your opponent off balance, taking the ball in the opposite direction with the outside of the other foot. When executed at speed, it’s a hugely effective one-versus-one move and used by players such as Kylian Mbappe and his Real Madrid team-mate Vinicius Junior to beat a defender.

🇧🇷 Outrageous Vinícius Júnior footwork!@realmadriden | #UCL pic.twitter.com/vIkWrGi9Ep

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) October 27, 2021

Pedro Calomino, an Argentine winger who played at the start of the 20th century, is widely credited with inventing the skill. If that’s true, Cristiano Ronaldo has a lot to thank Calomino for, given that the Portugal international has performed more stepovers than anyone else on the planet (that might not be strictly true but his former manager Sir Alex Ferguson once told Ronaldo that he was doing too many of them in a Manchester United shirt).

CR7 stepover 🤤#EURO2024 pic.twitter.com/iaqYyhwyvo

— UEFA EURO (@UEFAEURO) July 18, 2024

The foot that you use to do the stepover needs to stay as low as possible to the ground, but it’s also crucial that you transfer your weight to that side too, so as to dupe the opponent into thinking that you’re taking the ball that way.

Trundle, as with Ronaldo in the clip above, likes to add a sole roll just before the stepover.

Elastico

There’s a bit of showing off going on here — but in a good way. The elastico is a move that draws gasps from the crowd, partly because it’s not seen that often but also because it looks so damn cool and impressive when it comes off. On top of that, the elastico often leads to a nutmeg at the end of it, compounding the embarrassment for the player on the receiving end.

The USMNT player Sergino Dest ticked all of those boxes when he performed the elastico during a Champions League tie for PSV a few years ago on Jakub Kiwior, who was an Arsenal player at the time.

“There were players inside so I thought I had to beat him outside and that’s why the skill looks so clean — I knew what I was doing,” Dest told The Athletic.

The reaction of Dest’s team-mates said it all. Jordan Teze had his hands on his head, while Johan Bakayoko, who was watching from the substitutes’ bench, was left speechless.

Sergino Dest 😮‍💨#UCL pic.twitter.com/So5MtLnDXC

— Football on TNT Sports (@footballontnt) December 12, 2023

The Brazilian Ronaldo, his former team-mate Ronaldinho, and the Portuguese Ronaldo — pretty much anyone with Ronald in their name — all love the elastico, which is typically performed close to the touchline or byline and preceded by a slow dribble.

Marcus Rashford, playing for Manchester United against Twente, provides a textbook example.

Rashford on repeat 🤤@ManUtd | #UEL pic.twitter.com/VSojwVkShW

— UEFA Europa League (@EuropaLeague) October 31, 2024

Rivellino, the former Brazil winger, popularised the skill in the 1970s, but it’s Sergio Echigo, one of his team-mates at his club side Corinthians, who deserves the accolades. “I first saw him (Echigo) do it during a training session,” Rivellino told FIFA. “He completely fooled a defender who ended up off the pitch. It really intrigued me. I thought, ‘Wow, what has this Japanese guy done?’ I went to him after the session and he taught me.”

The elastico requires perseverance and patience to master, with a key learning point being that the skill, otherwise known as the flip-flap, is performed in one motion. The ball is pushed away with the outside of the foot and brought back in sharply with the inside of the same foot, almost in a chopping or snapping action, and it’s the first part of that move that leaves an opponent open to the nutmeg.

“You can send them to the shops!” says Eman.

Cruyff turn

Timeless and beautiful. A piece of skill that first appeared 52 years ago, courtesy of a true legend of the game, and continues to be taught to children all over the world.

A brief history lesson starts with Johan Cruyff shielding the ball just outside the penalty area in a World Cup match in 1974. With the Swedish full-back Jan Olsson marking him tightly from behind, Cruyff brought back his right leg and shaped to cross the ball with that same foot. As Olsson stuck out his left leg to try to block, Cruyff dragged the ball behind his standing leg. Olsson was left facing one way and Cruyff, a picture of elegance, disappeared in the opposite direction.

“That moment against Cruyff was the proudest moment of my career,” Olsson told David Winner in Brilliant Orange: The Neurotic Genius of Dutch Football. “I was not humiliated. I had no chance. Cruyff was a genius.”

🤯 Minds were blown across the world 🌍

🔙 #OnThisDay in 1974 🇳🇱 @OnsOranje legend @JohanCruyff introduced the masses to the Cruyff Turn ™️

🃏 Don’t worry Jan Olsson, you were one of countless conned by the extraordinary Dutch hypnotist 🧙‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/952hyfQb2k

— FIFA (@FIFAcom) June 19, 2020

Often used in wide areas but certainly not restricted to that part of the pitch, the Cruyff turn is a brilliant way of deceiving an opponent who is positioned slightly to the side of you.

It’s not a particularly difficult skill to learn, although success or failure against an opponent (opponents in the case of the former Wales international Hal Robson-Kanu) will depend largely on the ability to master the art of disguise by exaggerating the kicking action.

The Hal Robson-Kanu turn and finish 🪄🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿#EURO | #WCQ pic.twitter.com/Lqzhz5TlwF

— UEFA EURO (@UEFAEURO) December 13, 2024

Trundle is on hand to explain.

La Croqueta

Pull up a chair, Andres Iniesta.

“My idols were (Pep) Guardiola and Michael Laudrup,” Iniesta told The Athletic last year, recalling two former Barcelona greats. “Laudrup’s dribble, which he did so wonderfully, inspired me. Then I would try it in training, in a match, and in the end it became part of my game. It was something I felt comfortable with, and I usually did it quite well.”

That’s an understatement. Iniesta did it beautifully, swapping the ball from one foot to the other in one fluid movement, often as an opponent jumped in to make a challenge.

🗣️ Dani Alves: “It’s like he’s dancing the tango. I just love how he plays football so elegantly.”

🇪🇸 Andrés Iniesta: the master of the ball… @andresiniesta8 | @FCBarcelona | #UCL pic.twitter.com/QjIwXrEOfZ

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) November 26, 2021

Messi and Jamal Musiala, the Germany international and Bayern Munich midfielder, regularly use the trick to evade an over-eager defender.

“There’s no risk in it, it’s not flashy or anything, and it’s an easy skill to go by the defender,” Musiala told The Athletic in an interview on the eve of Euro 2024. “You just wait for a defender to step out, and when they do that and stick out a leg, you can just do a one-two (between both feet) and go by them.”

⚽️💫 “La Croqueta”, la spéciale de Jamal Musiala 🤩👌 pic.twitter.com/2IpQh0cPQN

— beIN SPORTS (@beinsports_FR) February 22, 2023

In case you were wondering, Croqueta wasn’t a player. The skill was given that name because it’s similar to the way in which a chef passes the dough from one hand to the other to shape a croqueta, which is a deep-fried roll with a crunchy exterior and… hang on a minute, this isn’t a cooking lesson.

Time to “shimmy and drag” with Eman and Tom Davies.

Rainbow flick

The chances of seeing this skill — some might call it a circus act — being performed at the World Cup this summer increased significantly on the back of Neymar being named in the Brazil squad. From Santos to Barcelona to Paris Saint-Germain, Neymar has taken the rainbow flick with him and never been shy about using it.

Rainbow flick! 😮@neymarjr || #UCL pic.twitter.com/tD2cZfLHtb

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) February 5, 2023

It’s showboating, plain and simple, and the sort of trick that would be guaranteed to get you kicked up in the air in lower-league football. Even at the top end of the game, it can provoke an angry reaction because of the way in which it strays into humiliating or disrespecting an opponent.

Neymar has first-hand experience of that, most notably when he enraged the Athletic Club players by trying a rainbow flick in the closing minutes of the Copa del Rey final back in 2015.

“It was an act with no elegance or sportsmanship,” Andoni Iraola, the Athletic captain at the time and now the Liverpool head coach, said.

Neymar shrugged in response. “It’s a way of dribbling past an opponent like any other. You can’t get angry because it’s my style of play, I’ve been doing that for years.”

Kyle Walker, the former Manchester City defender, saw the funny side when Vinicius Jr tried the trick on him in a Champions League game. “I went to hug him (at the final whistle) because he tried to rainbow flick me,” Walker said. “It was more like, ‘Please don’t try that again because I don’t want to be a meme’.”

“He tried to rainbow flick me! I don’t want to be a meme.” 😅

Kyle Walker has explained why he hugged Vinicius Jr 🤗#BBCFootball pic.twitter.com/uzhjm9XxRB

— BBC Sport (@BBCSport) May 16, 2023

To do the rainbow flick, you need to wedge the ball between both feet. Your dominant foot will be at the back and is going to be used to press the ball against your other foot. As you start to lean forward, the dominant foot is used to roll the ball up the back of your other leg. A little jump follows and the heel of your front foot flicks the ball into the air.

Oh, I guess you want to know where it originated, too: Brazil, unsurprisingly. He may not have been the first but there’s some fantastic black-and-white footage of the Santos winger Kaneco bamboozling an opponent in 1968.

Um dos lances mais bonitos da nossa história. 👏

Há 54 anos, Kaneco aplicava uma carretilha antes do golaço de Toninho Guerreiro. O drible ficou eternizado na goleada por 5×1 sobre o Botafogo-SP, na Vila Belmiro. 💥 pic.twitter.com/CaZAGvXzlM

— Santos FC (@SantosFC) March 9, 2022

Here’s Trundle channelling his inner Kaneco.

Thiago turn

“He can do things with a football that ought to be illegal.”

That was Peter Drury, the UK television commentator, reacting to Thiago Alcantara turning away from James Maddison with his signature move a few seasons back.

Owen Hargreaves, filming a Thiago masterclass for the Premier League, smiled as he showed the footage to the former Liverpool midfielder. “That one is super special because I would 100 per cent think, ‘I’ve got you!’” Hargreaves said.

“It’s one of the tools I will use if I am in an awkward situation,” Thiago replied.

The awkward situation that Thiago is talking about involves receiving the ball with his back to a player who is closing him down at speed from behind. Feinting to take the ball with the inside of his right foot, Thiago would change direction at the last minute, pivoting with the outside of the boot and dribbling off into the distance.

Simply sublime.

Happy birthday, Thiago! 🎈@Thiago6 🪄 #UCL pic.twitter.com/LF4ipfnGoP

— UEFA Champions League (@ChampionsLeague) April 11, 2023

Bolshaw, who is hoping to follow in Thiago’s footsteps at Liverpool, explains in the video below why the hips are key to the disguise element.

Maradona turn

Some call it the ‘roulette’, while others refer to it as the ‘360-degree spin’. But for those of us from a certain generation (traumatised, in this case, by a 1986 World Cup quarter-final between England and Argentina), it will always be ‘the Maradona’.

The Azteca Stadium in Mexico City, on June 22, 1986, was the scene of the greatest World Cup goal of all-time. Cementing his status as the best player in the world, Diego Maradona ran from inside his own half, dribbling past half the England team, as well as the goalkeeper Peter Shilton, to score.

But everything started with Maradona spinning away from two England players just inside the Argentina half with a lovely piece of skill. “Maradona, turns like a little eel, he comes away from trouble,” was how Bryon Butler, the late and great former BBC commentator put it.

Maradona’s mesmerising run! 🇦🇷🤩 pic.twitter.com/ZuHS54x0Wl

— FIFA World Cup (@FIFAWorldCup) May 29, 2024

That turn, or at least a form of it, became synonymous with Maradona. ‘A form of it’ because there are variations (Zinedine Zidane, for example, would often use the side of the foot for the first contact with the ball rather than the sole), and some would argue that a ‘Maradona turn’ in the most complete sense sees the player rotate full circle and use both feet in the process, which Maradona didn’t do against England. He did, however, do that seven years earlier against Scotland.

Happy 40th birthday to British football being introduced to the Maradona Turn pic.twitter.com/MjDWCmVo6P

— Adam Hurrey (@FootballCliches) June 2, 2019

The skill can be used to get you out of a tight space or to go past a player when the ball has been slightly overrun and an opponent is tempted into a challenge. There’s an element of hop, skip and jump about it as you place one foot on top of the ball, and then pirouette away by rolling the ball with the sole of the other foot.

Hocus pocus

Ronaldinho territory and that, typically, was where the magic happened.

The hocus pocus is the sort of skill that comes out on a good day. A very good day. In fact, the sort of day when you feel as though you can take on the world, which is probably how Ronaldinho felt whenever he put his boots on.

Back in 1999, while playing for the Brazilian side Gremio, Ronaldinho produced the hocus pocus against Internacional. That he had the confidence to do that at the age of 19 is one thing. That Dunga, the captain of the 1994 Brazil World Cup-winning team, was his victim is quite another. Many years later, in an interview with the YouTube channel Desimpedidos, Ronaldinho said that the whole episode was premeditated and part of a bet that earned him a free meal. “I said: ‘If I catch him (Dunga) in the corner, I’m going to do that dribble’,” Ronaldinho explained. “My team-mate doubted me.”

Ronaldinho 🆚 Dunga. pic.twitter.com/JGJKiSNucX

— 90s Football (@90sfootball) March 6, 2025

To pull the hocus pocus off, you need to be face-on with your opponent to begin with and place one foot in front of the ball. The side of the other foot then pushes the ball away before the outside of the same foot snaps it back in the other direction. At one point you’ll be standing with your legs crossed. But at least you’ll know what you’re doing with them, unlike poor Dunga.

Eduardo Salvio, the former Argentina winger, was a big fan of a move that Eman describes as “silky and cool”.

McGeady spin

To do this turn, you need to move the stick forward, to 12 o’clock essentially, and then left or right, depending on which direction you want the player to go.

That’s right, the McGeady Spin, named after the former Republic of Ireland player Aiden McGeady, is a skill move on EA Sports’ FIFA video games series — confirmation, if ever you needed it, that you’ve made it as a footballer.

McGeady’s career was not, in the nicest possible way, comparable to Ronaldinho, but the two-touch spin became his trademark and will be familiar to gamers, as well as to Celtic, Spartak Moscow, Everton and Sunderland fans.

One of those gamers was Alex Iwobi, who now plays for Fulham and Nigeria. In an interview with the New York Times a decade ago, Iwobi talked about Ronaldinho’s influence on him via the PlayStation and brought up McGeady’s name in the same breath. “He had one turn that I would go out into the garden and practice,” Iwobi said.

By the looks of things, Raphinha, the Barcelona and Brazil winger, was doing the same thing.

Raphinha with the ‘McGeady Spin’… 🪄🇧🇷#LALIGAHighlights pic.twitter.com/l3d17In4qN

— LALIGA English (@LaLigaEN) February 7, 2025

The good news is that it’s not too tricky. A Cruyff turn comes first, followed by spinning and sweeping the ball away with the outside of the other foot.

Scoop turn/180-degree nutmeg/cow’s tail

Rarely seen but beautiful when it comes off, especially if the scoop includes a nutmeg too.

What a stage to produce it, Ismael Saibari.

In the closing moments of Morocco’s opening game at the 2026 World Cup against Brazil on Saturday, Saibari capped an excellent goalscoring performance with a piece of skill that is known in Spain as ‘la cola de vaca’, which translates as… the cow’s tail.

It was a go-to move for the legendary former Brazil and Barcelona forward Romario, who did it so well that he was asked to demonstrate in a TV studio while wearing his best clothes.

Romario often used the turn in central areas of the pitch, as was the case in a memorable 5-0 win against Real Madrid, when he created the room to shoot and score after totally wrong-footing poor Rafa Alkorta.

⚽ Hay goles que se recordarán siempre, y este es uno de ellos
🔵🔴 25 años de la cola de vaca de @RomarioOnze en el Barça 5-0 Real Madrid
🔝 25 años de una jugada que ya forma parte de la historia del fútbol pic.twitter.com/N3YLd2OyD5

— MARCA (@marca) January 8, 2019

As for why it’s called ‘la cola de vaca’, apparently it’s to do with the way that cow’s swish their tails to shoo away flies.

No, that’s not what comes to mind when we watch Romario, either.

Anyway, it’s the scoop, or sweeping action, which is done without the foot leaving the ball, that is key to the turn working or not. You’re pushing the ball away with the inside of the foot and then almost bringing it back on itself. But the contact needs to be smooth to help with the disguise aspect. Christian Eriksen is a master at it.

Happy 34th birthday, Eriksen! 😍 pic.twitter.com/ORVlFpSZwy

— AFC Ajax (@AFCAjax) February 14, 2026

Robin van Persie, Alessandro Del Piero and, of course, Ronaldinho, also used the, er, cow’s tail to go past defenders too, with the latter completing a hat-trick for Brazil in 1999 after performing it superbly.

Ronaldinho vs Saudi Arabia, 1999. pic.twitter.com/ME6O2R8KGo

— 90s Football (@90sfootball) February 11, 2023

It is one of those turns that embarrasses an opponent when it comes off, which goes some way to explaining why Arsenal’s Ben White reacted like he did when Liverpool’s Curtis Jones tried it against him a couple of years ago.

Ben White wasn’t having it ❌#EmiratesFACup pic.twitter.com/PNgnckQWgx

— Emirates FA Cup (@EmiratesFACup) January 7, 2024

Over to Eman to “shift, drag and scoop”.