James Maddison scored a brilliant free-kick against Aston Villa (Image: Getty)
James Maddison is emulating David Beckham and Cristiano Ronaldo to become Tottenham’s master of set pieces.
The England international topped off Spurs’ impressive 4-1 victory over Aston Villa with a magnificent free-kick that had a touch of Beckham magic.
Despite being sidelined for 82 minutes on Sunday, the Spurs midfielder made his mark by delivering a flawless dead-ball masterpiece past the unmoving World Cup-winning goalkeeper Emi Martinez.
Maddison revealed: “I used to watch Becks closely. I think last season was the first year I ever had in my whole career where I didn’t score a direct free-kick.
“I have scored quite a few I reckon, maybe 15-16 direct free-kicks, so it annoyed me last year that I didn’t get one.
“I know I can be dangerous from them, but I probably haven’t shown it to Spurs fans yet.
“To be honest, I don’t feel like we have had that many good opportunities for whatever reason – we don’t seem to get direct free-kicks in good positions. We just haven’t had that many good positions for free-kicks and penalties as well.
“But that was a good position (against Villa) and I managed to stick it away.
“How much training goes into that execution? About 25 years probably! I love free-kicks, and I always did because I loved Becks and I was a Manchester United fan when I was young.
“Becks and then Cristiano Ronaldo, they were both very good at free-kicks although they used different techniques.
James Maddison curled in a free-kick late on (Image: Getty)
“I used to idolise people who were good at free-kicks. I was always in the garden practising. I mastered my own technique over the years and scored a fair few, a good few in the Premier League. Hopefully I get a few more.”
Maddison’s free-kick against Villa fooled Martinez, who was recently named the world’s best goalkeeper for the second year at the Ballon d’Or awards but was left stuck in his tracks here.
The Tottenham star chuckled: “Yeah, it was a nice one, wasn’t it? It can be challenging sometimes, the really close ones which are right on the edge of the box.
“You haven’t got as much time to get it up and down, so it’s why I took it a little bit quicker. As soon as the whistle went, I was already leaning into it, to try and catch Martinez out a bit, because he’s a good goalkeeper. Thankfully it went into that top bracket.”
James Maddison celebrates making it 4-1 to Tottenham against Aston Villa (Image: Getty)
Spurs’ ninth victory in 11 matches across all competitions has thrust them back into the outskirts of top-four contention after Manchester City, Arsenal, Chelsea and of course Villa all slipped up at the weekend.
Their second-half performance on Sunday was too much for Villa to cope with and Maddison added: “We turned the screw and they couldn’t live with our intensity.
“But that’s why the manager at half-time he stayed so calm, because he knows that we have got a chance to blow teams away in quick periods.
“Even at 1-0 down, he’s just like, ‘Get your heads up’. We know we can go and score four goals in a half against any team because that is what we do with our intensity. Thankfully that’s exactly what we did. And we blew them away.”
Source: https://www.express.co.uk/sport/football/1971249/Tottenham-James-Maddison-Man-Utd