Juninho Pernambucano

Juninho Pernambucano scored 77 direct free-kick goals in his career — the most by any player in recorded football history — with Olympique Lyonnais and the Brazilian national team. He pioneered the "knuckleball" free-kick technique (the Trivela Parabola) in which the ball moves erratically in flight with no spin, making it almost impossible to judge. He scored 44 free-kicks in Ligue 1 alone. His technique was so singular that physicists at Lyon University wrote academic papers attempting to explain the aerodynamics of his kicks.