Roberto Baggio At 50: 10 Perfect Goals

There was a very good reason why Andrea Pirlo blossomed into one of the greatest dead-ball specialists in the game: he learned from the absolute master.

The pair's footballing journeys overlapped at opposite ends of their careers, as a fresh-faced Pirlo, struggling to establish himself at Inter, was loaned back to hometown side Brescia where he linked up with his childhood idol Baggio. "He took free kicks like no other," marveled Pirlo, who admitted to spending days simply studying the flawless set-piece technique of the Divine Ponytail. Clearly, some of it stuck.

Baggio could strike a ball with absolute precision from almost any location, ending his career with 21 free kick goals. For a man who had to share space with Alessandro Del Piero during his time at Juventus, it's quite the tally.

Goals scored direct from a corner are one of football's less-indulged fetishes, and more often than not there's a huge element of the accidental about them. Not so with Baggio's pin-point in-swinger against Lecce in 2003 - anyone with any familiarity whatsoever with the Number 10's exemplary dead-ball mastery knew it was 100% intended by the maestro.