Bicycle kick

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A bicycle kick, scissors kick, Pelé kick or overhead kick is an expert move in football, which is made by throwing the body up into the air, making a shearing movement with the legs to get one leg high overhead to reach the ball (in original head height), which gets kicked backward over the player's head.

[edit] Overview

Different phases of the execution of a bicycle kick

The common English name comes from the two legs that look as if pedaling a bicycle with one leg going forward to the ball and the other backward to create an opposite moment. The overhead kick is commonly known as Chilena in most of Latin America.This is because in the chilean city of Talcahuano, a local football player invented it in 1914 . The German name Fallrückzieher (falling backward kick) emphasises the sacrifice of the player falling on his back, with a variant named Seitfallzieher (sideways falling kick) for a similar move to reach a volley ball sideways. In Norwegian, the move is known as Brassespark, literally Brazilian Kick.

There are two major situations (apart from showing off) where the bicycle kick would be useful in a game situation:

When a defender is desperate to remove the ball from near his side's goal, but he stands facing the goal and with his back to the direction he wants the ball to go, and the ball is bouncing around and thus difficult to control.
If a striker has his back to the opponent's goal and is in the opponent's penalty area or nearby, and the ball is bouncing at head height.

[edit] Attributions of invention

There are different attributions of invention in different parts of the world. The kick itself is part of football gaming for long but it is hard to control the ball to make a directed shot. The actual credit of invention goes usually to players who have used this expert move successfully in an (international) championship to score a goal. Ramón Unzaga Asla, a Spanish-Basque-born midfielder playing for Chile in the 1910s and 1920s; and Leônidas da Silva of Brazil from the 1930s (making a notable 6:5 win over Poland in the 1938 game in Strassbourg) are often cited. Leônidas himself attributed the invention of this move to another Brazilian player, Petronilho de Brito. In Italy, the invention is usually credited to Carlo Parola, even though Silvio Piola made a notable win over Germany with this move in March 1939, before Parola started his professional career. Additionally, former Aston Villa Chairman Doug Ellis claimed in his autobiography that he was the inventor of the kick, though he has no record as an active player and would have been of age even after Leônidas.

According to the Ramón Unzaga Asla account, the native of Bilbao/Spain, who in his teens emigrated to Chile with his parents, created the kick during an 1914 match of his football club Estrella del Mar in Talcahuano. Unzaga, though not scoring, received wider recognition after playing for Chile in the South American Championship of 1916 (hosted by Argentina) and 1920 (hosted by his adoptive country Chile). According to this account, the bicycle kick was noticed and named "la chilena" by a group of Argentinean journalists during the 1920 tournament. In 1927, Chilean club team Colo-Colo conducted a European tour and Chilean player David Arellano exhibited the move in Spain, and the name "Chilena" may refer to him.

In Germany, the national team player Klaus Fischer is seen as the master of the overhead kick for his spectacular goal in the 1976-77 season that is officially called the "goal of the century" in Germany, but Uwe Seeler is known to have used the kick to score a goal multiple times. Similarly, in Latin America, the bicycle kick is known as Pelé's signature move.