IKENWA NNABUOGOR
The beautiful game got players thrilling with plenty of skills attracting more admirers to the pitches and forcing watchers hanging on their seat edges and asking for more.
But none got close to the Rabona which got just very few players across the globe thrilling fans with the rare and difficult skill to showcase.
Rabona is a Spanish word meaning to play hooky (meaning truancy), to skip school.The name derives from its first documented performance by an Argentine striker Ricardo Infante in a game between Estudiantes de la Plata and Rosario Central in 1948.
The football magazine El Gráfico published a front cover showing Infante dressed as a schoolboy with the caption “El infante que se hizo la rabona” translated to English: “The kid who plays hooky.”
Rabona comes from the phrase ‘Hacerse le Rabona’ meaning playing hooky at school. At the time the move was seen as a player ‘skipping’ out on using their weaker foot and switching to their dominant one. This trick requires precision, quick thinking, balance, creativity, flexibility, and a lot of time and practice.
The first filmed Rabona was performed by Brazilian footballer Pelé in the São Paulo state championship in 1957. Giovanni “Cocò” Roccotelli is credited with popularising the Rabona in Italy during the 1970s; at the time, this move was simply called a “crossed-kick” meaning, incrociata, in Italian language.
Now, what’s Rabona? It’s bringing your left foot to the right side of the ball about three inches and bringing your right leg behind your left leg and strike the ball with it
This rare skill has got very few players out of thousands of registered players world over making fans happy with the round leather game compared to other skills and a million others at sea in the art.
Does this skill require a player who’s truly out-of-this-world to perform? In truth, this is a difficult skill to perform and it takes a lot of ingenuity to accomplish.
Though, rabona was invented as a result of a right footed player seen as having “no left foot” as his tough positioning could pose a huge problem for his left foot to produce his much needed power or shot, then a Rabona comes to the rescue.
Rabonas have seen to be performed by players with both feet that are effective like Pele, Cristiano Ronaldo, our own Jay Jay Okocha, to dismiss that fact that right footed players are cornered to escape with it.
What about players that got dangerous left feet and “dead” right feet that have fed their fans’ eyes with Rabonas?
Diego Maradona, Messi come to mind and these extraordinaires, among others have traded well with Rabonas that even the Stock Exchange could not accommodate their highly skyrocketing stocks any longer.
Players that have also traded with Maradona and Messi with Rabonas include Fernando Redondo, Alan Ball, Romário, Roberto Baggio, Pablo Aimar, Raúl Jiménez, Mário Jardel, David Villa and Ariel Ortega.
Others include Robinho, Eden Hazard, Joe Cole, Ronaldinho, Ángel Di María, Rivaldo, Ricardo Quaresma, Erik Lamela, Gianfranco Zola, Roberto Carlos, Neymar, Luis Suárez and Paul Gascoigne, who famously scored from the spot using the brilliant technique.
Lamela will be remembered in history for his breathtaking Rabona goal against Arsenal in the English Premier League fixture.
Back home in Nigeria, Rabonas are aliens except the former Eagles’ captain Okocha who thrilled fans with it.
But where are the players who are with Okocha on the Rabona boat?
Maybe the beautiful ones are not yet born.
