The world’s best free-kick takers ranked: Messi, Fernandes, Szoboszlai & more
Top players from Liverpool, Manchester United, Real Madrid and Arsenal feature in our ranking of the best free-kick takers across world football.
As tactical margins shrink, dead-ball specialists are increasingly decisive. The names featured here represent the gold standard for free-kick excellence in 2026.
Here’s our ranking of the best free-kick takers in the world in 2026.
9. Hakan Calhanoglu
We instinctively think of Inter’s dead-ball specialist as one of the most dangerous free-kick takers around, but the stats no longer really bear that out.
The Turkey international scored nine(!) free-kicks for Bayer Leverkusen in the 2014-15 season, but that was over 10 years ago.
He was still pretty deadly at Milan, too, but he’s scored just one in the last six seasons.
8. Cristiano Ronaldo
We assume that anyone who considers Ronaldo the best free-kick taker in the world has been in a coma since he was playing in the prime Barclays era.
Let’s be honest. The veteran has been pretty rubbish at free-kicks for a long, long time.
The overwhelming majority of Ronaldo’s free-kicks – of which he still takes many in his vain attempt to reach 1000 career goals out in Saudi Arabia – don’t even test the goalkeeper.
Ronaldo’s hit rate might be downright pitiful these days, and he didn’t score a single free-kick in 2025, but he’s not completely useless. He has scored one this year.
7. Declan Rice
…Somewhere in the darkest bowels of the Southampton training ground, Ward-Prowse looks at his phone, opening a WhatsApp message that links to this very article.
“What? A player with just two career free-kick goals better than me? You’re taking the p*ss, aren’t you?”
Sorry, them’s the breaks. What free-kick goals they were.
One was nominated for the Puskas Award. The other could’ve been. And they were against Real Madrid in a Champions League quarter-final.
Rice has fizzed in a few that have come close since then.
And while this ranking is concerned with goals only, a special shoutout to Rice’s wicked deliveries – inevitably onto the bonce of Gabriel Magalhaes – from dead-ball situations. Undefendable.
6. Trent Alexander-Arnold
Liverpool’s journey to the 2018 Champions League final began with a teenage Alexander-Arnold scoring a peach of a free-kick goal in a preliminary qualifier against Hoffenheim.
The curling effort was the very first of his Liverpool career and hinted at the dead-ball prowess he’d make his calling card in years to come.
The right-back hasn’t scored bucketloads since then – just eight for his boyhood club – but he was usually good for one or two a season. That’s a pretty rare feat, as the names below him will attest.
He hasn’t taken all that many at Real Madrid, which is to be expected given the competition and egos in that dressing room. He’s yet to open his account for Los Blancos.
5. Anton Stach
Leeds United’s greatest dead-ball merchant since Ian Harte. Last season the German became the first player since the Republic of Ireland international to score three direct free-kicks in a Premier League campaign for the Yorkshire outfit.
Stach also demonstrated his clutch gene with a late match-winner against Nottingham Forest.
Bit of a cheat code for Daniel Farke’s side.
4. Hulk
Here’s a blast from the past. Pun only semi-intended.
The Brazilian joins Ronaldo and Luka Modric in the quadragenarian club. Hulk is still going and still banging them in back home.
He scored four free-kick goals in the 2025 Brazilian season, and has added a further two in 2026 for good measure, taking his career tally to a not-too-shabby 34.
3. Bruno Fernandes
The Portuguese playmaker isn’t wildly prolific. He’s scored a grand total of 13 direct free-kicks in his career, averaging around one a season in the Premier League.
But the numbers are trending upwards in the right direction.
His free-kicks have helped dig out points in chaotic games against Everton, Arsenal and Bournemouth for a Manchester United side that would’ve looked utterly lost without his heroics.
2. Dominik Szoboszlai
“Yeah, I did my homework,” Szoboszlai explained of his sneaky under-the-wall effort against Marseille last season.
“I got told that if no one is lying down maybe I can have a chance to hit it under the wall and no one was laying down so I tried it, and it worked out.”
A lesson there in the importance of the draft excluder.
Not only can he use his head, Szoboszlai can absolutely wallop them in from range too. Just ask Arsenal.
1. Lionel Messi
With Messi, the usual caveats apply. MLS. Rubbish goalkeepers. Blah blah blah. The new EA FC 27 still ranks Messi as the best in the world, and we’re inclined to agree.
This is a man with 76 career free-kick goals. Only Marcelinho Carioca (78) has scored more in football history. This’ll surely be another record he’ll claim before hanging up his boots.
Messi peaked in 2018 with 10 free-kicks that calendar year, but he’s still totting them up on the regular. He scored seven for club and country in 2026 so far, including an absolute pearler against Columbus Crew.
