Free kick goals in football: an unlikely success between failure and embarrassment

Søren Nørgaard Sørensen, John Rasmussen

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

1 Citation (Scopus)

Abstract

We develop and use an advanced numerical model to investigate the window of opportunity of free kicks in association football. The planar multibody forward dynamics model comprises a two segment leg model with joint actuations, a football, a wall and the turf. Contact mechanics is defined to model the impact of the foot and the ball's interaction with the different elements in the environment. The optimum kick is determined using the global optimization algorithm Differential Evolution, requiring millions of kick simulations. The sensitivity of various solutions to parameter perturbation is investigated.

It is concluded that toe kicks are theoretically superior to instep kicks, but are very difficult to perform reliably. The results also show that very small perturbations in parameters can lead to embarrassingly failed kicks.
Original languageEnglish
JournalSports Engineering
Volume21
Issue number2
Pages (from-to)103–114
Number of pages12
ISSN1369-7072
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2018

Keywords

  • Football free kick
  • Forward dynamics
  • Motion prediction
  • Computer Simulation
  • Optimization
  • soccer
  • Computer simulation
  • Soccer

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