Juninho Pernambucano

Sport Recife

Born in Recife, Juninho started his professional career at Sport Recife and quickly established himself as a rising star in Brazilian football. He won two regional titles with the club. According to Juninho, it was as a 13-year-old that he started to take free-kicks and began to develop his knuckleball technique, telling FourFourTwo magazine: “I started by copying free-kicks taken by Marcelinho, who played for Corinthians. He was one of my inspirations, and the first player I had ever seen hit the ball head on and make it dance in the air. Didi, who won the World Cup with Brazil in 1958 and 1962, was doing it back then, too. Everyone since has just been tweaking the formula.” It was when he got to France that Juninho says he mastered it.

Vasco da Gama

Juninho Pernambucano joined Vasco da Gama in 1995. He won several trophies during his first stint with the club, including the Brazilian Championship in 1997 and 2000, the Copa Libertadores in 1998, the Copa Mercosur in 2000, as well as the 2000 Brazilian Silver Ball award as one of the best Brazilian midfielders of the season. At that time, he was playing with Romário, Edmundo, and Juninho Paulista, and he became a favourite of the Vasco fans. Since that time he has been known as Reizinho de São Januário (The Little King of São Januário), a reference to Vasco da Gama's stadium, as well as Reizinho da Colina (The Little King of the Hill). In 2001, the player won a preliminary injunction against…

On 7 September 1999, Juninho played two top-level matches in two different countries in the same day. He represented his country in the second half of the friendly match between Brazil and Argentina in Porto Alegre, which Brazil won 4–2, playing about fifteen minutes. In spite of a delayed flight to Montevideo, he managed to arrive in Uruguay in time to feature in the second half of the Copa Mercosur match between Vasco and Nacional. He took part at the 2001 Copa América with Brazil. Although Juninho had a period of prolonged domestic success during the 2000s, that contributed to him being considered one of the best Brazilian players in the world at the time, he was not selected for the Brazilian squad that featured at the 2002 FIFA World Cup and the 2004 Copa América, missing both because of a recurring knee injury. Brazil would win both tournaments. He was however a member of the Brazil squad that won the 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup, scoring a free kick against Euro 2004 champions Greece. In the 2006 FIFA World Cup, Juninho scored a knuckleball goal in open play against Japan in a group stage match. Following Brazil's defeat to eventual runners-up France in the quarter-finals of the tournament, he announced his international retirement, so as to make way for younger talents coming through the ranks in Brazil, in order to build for the 2010 FIFA World Cup.

In May 2019, Juninho was appointed as the director of football of his former club Lyon. His first decision was to name former Brazilian international teammate Sylvinho as the head coach of the French Ligue 1 team.

Juninho has been described as "one of the world's most feared strikers of a static ball". Frequently ranked the greatest free-kick exponent, the method he used for long-range free kicks is "knuckle balling", where the ball has almost no spinning motion during flight. A successful knuckle ball will "move" or "wobble" in the air unpredictably, veering in a number of different directions (making it difficult to save) before finding the net. He first made his name as a free kick taker with a long range strike against Bayern Munich in the 2003–04 Champions League group stage in which the ball dipped viciously at the end of travel that deceived Bayern keeper Oliver Kahn, who was considered one of the best goalkeepers in the world at the time.

Juninho has scored from free-kicks beyond 40 yards on a number of occasions: including against Ajaccio in 2006, against Barcelona in 2007, against Nice in 2008, and a strike against Marseille in 2009—his final free kick goal for Lyon. Even before Lyon, he displayed his talent at Vasco da Gama, scoring several free kick goals for the club. Juninho has also scored memorable goals for Brazil, the most famous being a curling freekick from 30 yards against Greece in the 2005 FIFA Confederations Cup. Brazil would go on to win the match 3–0. At the 2006 World Cup, during a group stage match against Japan, he scored a long-range knuckleball from open play. Brazil won the match 4-1. Juninho's free-kick style has been adapted by several other players,…