Lionel Messi is one of the greatest free-kick takers in history.
While it's difficult to picture Juninho Pernambucano and David Beckham falling down the pecking order, there is no longer any debating that Messi deserves to be in the conversation for the top 10.
And what makes Messi's journey to more than 50 free-kick conversions all the more incredible is that it wasn't necessarily a skill that he had nailed down during the peak of his career.
Messi's free-kick genius
Besides, it's easy to forget that in the 2011/12 campaign where Messi notched an outrageous 73 goals for Barcelona that only three of his strikes came from free-kicks.
However, as Messi's career at Camp Nou progressed, so too did his free-kick taking with the Argentine eventually scoring from a dead ball so regularly that rival teams drew up special tactics.
By the time Messi waved goodbye to Spanish football, the sight of six-man walls with players laid behind them and a defender on the goal-line became a common sight such was his lethality.
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Practise makes perfect
And while it's impossible to be certain about the ways in which Messi became such a free-kick expert, you don't have to be a world-class coach to know that practise will have played a key role.
No doubt the Paris Saint-Germain takes free-kick after free-kick after free-kick to keep his foot in the door and fans are occasionally given an insight into this routine when Messi warms up for games.
After all, you only need to look at the last international break to see that two viral clips emerged of Messi rattling home free-kicks like they were penalties in Argentina training.
Messi replicates free-kick worldie
However, of all the frighteningly good clips of Messi practising free-kicks, we're not say any of them can compete with footage of the Barca legend preempting a stunning goal at Villarreal in 2017.
According to the Mirror, viral footage showing Messi scoring the exact same free-kick before and during a Barcelona game is indeed from the same 1-1 draw at the Estadio de la Ceramica.
Not only is the position of the ball almost identical, but so is the finish, which suggests that Messi had his dramatic last-minute equaliser planned out before the game. Take a look down below:
Imagine being able to churn out that level of accuracy on repeat. Frightening.
Frightening level of accuracy
With Barcelona trailing 1-0 doing into the final minutes of the game, one can't help wondering whether Messi cast his mind back to the free-kick technique that worked so well in the warm-up.
It's no secret that muscle memory plays a key role in elite sports and Messi might well have had that exact feel for weighting and curling the ball in his left leg by the time it was the real deal.
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Either way, it goes to show that Messi's efficiency from free-kicks is so extraterrestrial that he can replicate score worldies with a regularity that us mere mortals couldn't achieve with a 20-yard pass.
