Back in the prime “Barclays” era of the Premier League, it seemed like every weekend someone scored a free-kick. Even before that era, it seemed like David Beckham scored free-kicks all the time. The past few years it doesn’t seem like that anymore, rarely do we see free-kicks nestle in the back of the next anymore. So are there less free-kick goals now? Are less free-kicks being attempted? We checked the data to find out.
The earliest data we could find of goals scored from direct free-kicks was for the 2006/2007 season. United won the title for the first time since 2003, Rooney and Ronaldo had their breakout seasons. In total that year, 27 free-kicks were scored. We couldn’t find the number of free-kicks attempted but according to the Premier League it was above 400.
The first season with data including number of free-kicks attempted was from the 2008/2009 season. There were a total of 33 free-kicks scored that season from 682 attempts.
The next few seasons a decline in the number of free-kicks attempted happened. 2013/2014 was the first year there were less than 500 free-kicks attempted but with a better return of 39 goals. 2017/2018 was the first year under 400 free-kicks attempted with a dramatic decline of only 16 goals scored that year.
2023/2024 was the lowest number of free-kicks scored in Premier League history with just 11 from 304 attempts and last season (2024/2025) was the lowest number of free-kicks attempted with just 270 returning 13 goals.
The decline is astonishing, and it’s noticeable. The amount of free-kicks scored today is 59% less than the peak of 41 scored 20 years ago. The decline of free-kicks attempted also matches with that being down 60%. Using AI to analyse the data, in the next 5-10 years there could be as few as 5 free-kicks scored a year with 150 attempts.
This begs the question of what is causing the amount of free-kicks to be scored and attempted to decline? Have tactics really changed that much in the last 20 years that less and less fouls are being committed from shooting positions? Or is it that teams would rather not shoot from free-kicks anymore? It seems that way but that data is really hard to find. Maybe Opta could investigate.
The numbers are also slightly skewed in recent years because of players like James Ward-Prowse. If he wasn’t around the numbers would be a lot less already. Deadball specialists like him, Beckham, Mata, Payet, Drogba and even Ronaldo of old are dying out.
There have been some iconic free-kicks scored in the Premier League. That Ronaldo knuckleball against Portsmouth, that Payet curler that seemed to defy the laws of gravity, that screamer from Laurent Robert which was used in the movie Goal! Everybody has a favourite free-kick they remember and it’s a shame we don’t get them that often anymore.
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