Roberto Carlos' iconic free-kick: Brazilian star attempted to recreate feat in his garden

On June 3, 1997, Roberto Carlos stunned the world with a physics defying free-kick goal against France.

It’s exactly a quarter of a century ago today that Carlos scored the beauty.

The strike left French goalkeeper, Fabien Barthez, utterly perplexed as the ball that originally looked like it was heading far wide of the goal and into the crowd, arched inwards and kissed the post on its way to ripping into the back of the net.

It was a thunderbolt of the highest order and one that Carlos himself can barely believe he scored to this day.

“To be honest, until this day I don’t know how I did that,” he said in an interview with ESPN Brasil in 2017.

“It was a beautiful goal. It required a lot of training and hard work throughout my career. But that hard work paid off, as I was able to score such a wonderful goal, which was a special moment for me.”

The thought of somebody repeating the epic feat, or something of a similar ilk, seems unlikely. Carlos himself admitted that he never even attempted to kick the ball in the same way after scoring the goal because he knew it couldn’t be repeated.

Not in his professional career at least…

The Brazilian did try to recreate the goal a couple of years back, albeit on a smaller scale and in his back garden.

And you know what, he’s certainly still got the knack for it.

Check out how it turned out below:

When Roberto Carlos recreated his famous free kick vs. France