British Vision Issue 28 像贝克汉姆一样踢球

Welcome back. Now you might think that greate footballers are born, not made, that bending it like Beckham or delivering a perfect kick is a matter of nature rather than nurture¹. But an expert who studies the game at length believes there's far more to it than that. Ken² Bray³ is a sports biomechanic. He says, he says that the beautiful games' most beautiful moments are largely down to science. Alastair McKee went to meet him.

If you want to kick a perfect free kick, if you get any backspin on the ball, that's gonna make the ball rise. However if you take it on the side...

Teaching the art of spin, a talented young footballer, Maddy Carlumey learns the sicence behind taking the perfect free kick, literally⁴ how to bend it like Beckham.

Now the special thing about David Beckham is that he can get deep on the ball and that works topspin by striking the ball, so rotates like that. And then the deflective force is down in that direction. And I bet you can do all of that. I bet you can.

The success of the Beckham Swerve(贝氏弧线球), moving at 70 miles an hour, spinning 10 times a second is famous for getting England out of trouble. Here in October, 2001 his 90th-minute goal against Greece, earned the home team a place in the 2002 World Cup finals.

What Ken Bray has done is to break football down using biomechanics. The laws which explain how living organisms move in relation to mechanical principles. By attaching sensors⁵ to the leg of a footballer, Bray could measure the exact movement it makes when kicking the ball. Inevitably⁶, it all comes down to numbers. This is the equation for Beckham's magic free kick. Back on the training pitch, how is all this affecting Maddy's free kicks? Ok, we'll come back later.

Meanwhile in the laboratory, video cameras analyse a throw-in by the England defender⁷ Gary Neville, developing an understanding of how his use of spin gets the ball further than any other player. A similar approach is used with penalties. An artificial ball launcher delivering an assortment⁸ of spot kicks varying in speed and direction. Bray reckons his crack to fail-safe (Guaranteed not to fail)formular.

Now in a research we've done, we've shown that there's a proportion of the goal area that's absolutely unreachable by the goal keeper no matter how well he dives. So there's an inviting⁹ target of about 28 to 30 percent of the goal area left undefended.

Of course, it's not always that easy.

"Oh, he's put it miles over the bar."

"Don't balloon it over the bar as if you're taking a free-kick like David Beckham. Hit it at the pace it used to be, 60, 60, 66, 67 miles an hour.

Back to Maddy on the training pitch, and ..oh,dear. With the World Cup so close, no analyses of football would be complete without a look at the team formations. Should it be 4-2-4, 4-4-2, 4-3-3, 4-5-1 or even a return to the formation of 1870 with 7 strikers.

Now interestingly I've analysed, say, all the classic formations, by looking at the number of passes any player can produce up to about 40 metres.

Ok, hold that thought, the real burning question for science is will Rooney be fit for the World Cup.

If you want my heart, my heart says yes. Unfortunately, my head says no. I think Rooney has two metatarsal fractures and these are six weeks, as long a duration. However Englang gets on this summer, with or without their star striker is definitely telling tale there for the future. And they appear to know how to bend the ball.

1 nurture   

n.养育，照顾，教育；滋养，营养品；vt.养育，给与营养物，教养，扶持

参考例句：

• The tree grows well in his nurture.在他的培育下这棵树长得很好。
• The two sisters had received very different nurture.这俩个姊妹接受过极不同的教育。

2 ken   

n.视野，知识领域

参考例句：

• Such things are beyond my ken.我可不懂这些事。
• Abstract words are beyond the ken of children.抽象的言辞超出小孩所理解的范围.

3 bray   

n.驴叫声, 喇叭声；v.驴叫

参考例句：

• She cut him off with a wild bray of laughter.她用刺耳的狂笑打断了他的讲话。
• The donkey brayed and tried to bolt.这头驴嘶叫着试图脱缰而逃。

4 literally   

adv.照字面意义，逐字地；确实

参考例句：

• He translated the passage literally.他逐字逐句地翻译这段文字。
• Sometimes she would not sit down till she was literally faint.有时候，她不走到真正要昏厥了，决不肯坐下来。

5 sensors   

n.传感器，灵敏元件( sensor的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• There were more than 2000 sensors here. 这里装有两千多个灵敏元件。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• Significant changes have been noted where sensors were exposed to trichloride. 当传感器暴露在三氯化物中时，有很大变化。 来自辞典例句

6 inevitably   

adv.不可避免地；必然发生地

参考例句：

• In the way you go on,you are inevitably coming apart.照你们这样下去，毫无疑问是会散伙的。
• Technological changes will inevitably lead to unemployment.技术变革必然会导致失业。

7 defender   

n.保卫者，拥护者，辩护人

参考例句：

• He shouldered off a defender and shot at goal.他用肩膀挡开防守队员，然后射门。
• The defender argued down the prosecutor at the court.辩护人在法庭上驳倒了起诉人。

8 assortment   

n.分类，各色俱备之物，聚集

参考例句：

• This shop has a good assortment of goods to choose from.该店各色货物俱全，任君选择。
• She was wearing an odd assortment of clothes.她穿着奇装异服。

9 inviting   

adj.诱人的，引人注目的

参考例句：

• An inviting smell of coffee wafted into the room.一股诱人的咖啡香味飘进了房间。
• The kitchen smelled warm and inviting and blessedly familiar.这间厨房的味道温暖诱人，使人感到亲切温馨。