That was during last season’s pre-season tour of Germany Leeds United realized they had a wizard on their hands.
After their sessions, the players took part in some mini-competitions. Who had the longest throw? Who took the best free kicks?
It’s safe to say Daniel Farke had Hoffenheim not paid £17.4m last year for Anton Stach, a 6ft 4in defensive midfielder, for his dead-ball skills. Stach did not score a single free-kick in his four years in the Bundesliga and attempted just one attempt at a goal from one for Hoffenheim. Farke signed him to keep his promoted team in the league Premier League with his no-nonsense physicality, his ability to win duels and break up play in midfield.
Only, here he was, a giant of a man, shooting them to the ground like Ian Harte. Club staff watch with wide eyes. What do we have here? He also took the best corners. Shouldn’t we have one of those big guys in the box trying to win headers, they wondered? Not when his deliveries were as tantalizing as this one.
What they had, it turns out, is one of the best players in the Premier League. His late winner at Nottingham Forest on the opening weekend was his fourth league goal from a free-kick since joining. Only Liverpool’s Dominik Szoboszlai can boast so much.
But what’s most remarkable is how deadly he is. Stach scored four free kicks, but he only shot from ten of them. A small sample size, of course, but Stach is, by some distance, the most efficient since Opta’s registration in 2003 of anyone who has attempted as many free-kick shots as he has. Szoboszlai, on the other hand, has fired 27 shots for his four goals.
Anton Stach’s late winning goal at Nottingham Forest for Leeds was the latest example of his superb free-kick skills
The declining long-range attack left Forest’s Matz Sels grasping for nothing
The 27-year-old German midfielder is approaching cult status at Elland Road
James Ward-Prowse, who is one behind David Beckham’s Premier League record of 18 free-kicks, has scored 141 goals, a goalscoring percentage of 12 percent. Stach’s is 40 percent.
His first gem came against Wolves at the start of his debut season, when he smashed the ball over the wall into the top right corner from a central area to put Leeds ahead in a 3–1 win.
The next three all came from the left and fooled the keeper: an injury-time curler against Crystal Palace where Dean Henderson didn’t move a muscle, another from miles away against Aston Villa where Emi Martinez thought he was about to cross the ball into the crowded penalty area, only for Stach to send it whistling into the near post, before his winner from the corner of the box against Forest, which Matz Sels could only push into the net.
“A clear technical quality of Stach is that he gets a clean touch on the ball,” says specialist ball-striking coach Bartek Sylwestrzak, who has worked with numerous Premier League players. Daily mail sport. ‘If you look at most players who try to shoot over the wall with the inside of the foot, their connections are usually quite average. The shots are often weak and the ball speed is relatively slow.
‘Stach, however, hits the ball quite cleanly and that translates into good ball speed. He is able to shoot from longer distances, as he did against Villa. Many free kick takers wouldn’t try that because they wouldn’t trust their shot.
‘In terms of spin of the ball, he is mainly an inside spinner, but he also has a bit of forward spin. If you look at his goal against Palace, he hit it over the wall and it still fell. Topspin gives a huge advantage. If you don’t put topspin on the ball, you’re relying on gravity to bring the ball down, so players must reduce the force of the shot to hit the target.
‘The ability to put topspin on the ball is one of the main reasons why Juninho Pernambucano is still the best free-kick taker in the history of football. He could combine forward spin with very high power. Stach is decent, but there is a lot of potential to be even better.”
It seems that practice makes perfect. Stach often stays after training to hone his lethal skills, sometimes with assistant coach Edmund Riemer as Leeds work on set-piece routines, but often it’s just himself, a ball and a goalkeeper.
Stach often stays after training to hone his lethal skills, sometimes with assistant coach Edmund Riemer as Leeds work on set-piece routines, but it is often just him, a ball and a goalkeeper
‘Stach is reasonable, but there is a lot of potential to become even better’
Stach is bringing free kicks back into fashion, after a steady decline in recent years
Stach is bringing free kicks back into fashion after a steady decline in recent years, with the rise of analytics and expected goals, not just of goals from free kicks, but of teams even bothering to shoot at all.
“The art of taking free kicks has been a bit lost to the system,” said a top Premier League performance director. Daily mail sport last year. ‘Set-pieces can turn games around, so you want to do things that statistically give you a better chance of scoring than a player trying to wrap it into the top corner from 30 yards. It just doesn’t make much sense to go straight like Beckham used to.’
Only eleven direct free kicks were scored in the entire 2023-2024 season, and only thirteen the following season, with a small increase to eighteen last season. In 2013-2014 there were almost forty.
“The idea is not: ‘Let’s improve free kicks and score from them,’” Sylwestrzak adds. The thought is: “Let’s just not shoot.” But a direct free kick is a very good scoring opportunity, and well-trained players can make optimal use of it.’
And yet we’ve already scored two in the Premier League on the opening weekend with Stach’s winner, as well as Nilson Angulo’s goal for Sunderland against Ipswich. Early days again, but it feels like there is a bit of a revival. Eight sides had at least one goal attempt from a free kick in their first match.
“I remember the magical free-kick takers: Juninho, who got this crazy curve on the ball,” Farke said after Stach’s winner at the City Ground. “It’s always an important part of the game, not just nowadays. Anton may not be as beautiful to watch as Juninho’s free kicks, but he is extremely effective, and I quite like that.’ No wonder.
