Juninho Pernambucano

Who is Juninho Pernambucano?

Antônio Augusto Ribeiro Reis Jr., commonly known as Juninho or Juninho Pernambucano, is a retired Brazilian footballer. He is considered by many to be the greatest free kick specialist of all time. Juninho led Olympique Lyonnais to seven consecutive Ligue 1 titles before leaving the club in 2009 while scoring 100 goals in 350 official games for Lyon, and six goals in 40 games for the Brazilian national team. He retired from international football after the 2006 World Cup. Juninho began his senior career in Sport and earnt acclaim as a free kick specialist. Juninho's dead-ball curling technique is used by many famous players such as Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Gareth Bale, Neymar, Ronaldinho, and Andrea Pirlo, and has been used by David Beckham and Zinedine Zidane as well. Juninho is said to be gifted with the ability to make the ball turn direction twice while in air and had a freekick accuracy of 97% while he played at Lyon, which is the highest freekick accuracy ever achieved by any player.