Three free-kick goals in a row: Omar Marmoush follows in the footsteps of Lionel Messi | hessenschau.de

Omar Khaled Mohamed Abd Elsala Marmoush is a challenge. For everyone who cares about preventing goals for a living anyway. With his free-kick goal against Stuttgart, he even made people who just keep records of what the professionals in the Bundesliga do sweat.

Only since sometime in the 2000s has it been properly recorded who scored and how or which goals were scored – and even then the historiography is imprecise. If the whole thing then extends to several competitions, everything becomes even more confusing and often depends on who you ask.

Now this Marmoush has scored in two different competitions. Three direct free kicks in a row – unbelievably beautiful. After his precision shot against Prague in the Europa League, his employer promoted him to the nobility.

In a row with Ronaldo, Messi, Beckham and Ronaldinho

Eintracht Frankfurt posted that he was only the ninth professional ever to score two direct free kicks in two games in a row. Plus a picture with Marmoush and the other eight: Ronaldo, Beckham, Pirlo, Ronaldinho, Calhanoglu, Mihajlovic, Juninho, Messi. A select circle in which the Frankfurter had already circled himself.

Due to high demand, Marmoush put a free kick into the net for VfB Stuttgart just three days later. In the frenzy of goals, the information even made the rounds for a short time that no one had managed to do this before. But that’s not entirely true. In 2019, an Argentine named Lionel Messi already set his magic footprint on this record, explains the data service provider Opta. Alessandro del Piero once achieved the same thing for Juventus.

And there was also someone else in the Bundesliga who can easily be forgotten in these spheres: Christian Fuchs. In the 2009/10 Bundesliga season he kicked the ball for VfL Bochum and once scored three free kicks in three games in a row. Advantage Marmoush: His series is still running. If he were to score again in the next game at Werder Bremen, the record would be reserved for him alone.

Memories of Calhanoglu’s art shots

With his free-kick paintings, the Egyptian is in a certain respect a Renaissance artist: the somewhat forgotten discipline of direct free-kick goals may be experiencing a rebirth. Here too, the data is not particularly extensive. However, the transfermarkt.de portal has counted and feeds the gut feeling with numbers. In the last Bundesliga season there were only 14 direct free kick goals across the league. In the past five years, the 20 mark has only been broken once.

In 2014/15, the trainers placed even more emphasis on this training content – or there were simply better specialists. Hakan Calhanoglu alone played a key role in Bayer Leverkusen scoring 39 free-kick goals with six successful attempts.

Frankfurt’s standard worries are forgotten

However, the fact that an Eintracht professional of all people is now preparing to revive this art form is a statistical joke. The notorious harmlessness of dead balls threatened to seep into the club’s self-image. Last season, fans would probably have swapped their season tickets for a despicable corner-header goal.

The ease with which Hessians are doing things these days can also be seen from this: after ten Bundesliga games in the current round, Frankfurt scored most often in the league from dead balls (seven times) and scored the most goals in the Bundesliga after corners (three). Upside down world.

One wonders what else Marmoush could possibly solve. But in this form, Eintracht is gradually running out of problems.