Paul Pogba caused a minor stir on Tuesday night when he beat two Internazionale defenders with a single touch. The Juventus midfielder was closed down by a couple of onrushing centre-backs on the 18-yard line but managed to give them the slip with a delicious feint. Pogba edged the ball to his right and then poked it through the defenders, before bursting between them and taking a shot at Samir Handanovic.
Pogba may have fast feet but he lacks the steady composure of the great Rivellino, who brought the move to global attention back in the 1960s. Rivellino learned the elastico from Sérgio Echigo, one of his Corinthians team-mates. The pair were playing together for the club’s youth team in 1964 when Echigo beat a man with a new piece of skill. Rivellino was impressed and asked for a tutorial: “I saw him do it once and I said, ‘Hey, Japanese, what’s that trick?’ He said, ‘It’s easy Rive, I’ll teach you it,’ and he says now that he invented it, but I perfected it.”
Echigo had a decent career in Japan, but Rivellino was to be the player who introduced the trick to the world. He were one better than Pogba and managed to give it some end product:
Rivellino says he perfected the trick, but Ronaldo and Ronaldinho have brought it to a truly global audience. Willian and Anderson have continued the fine tradition of Brazilians beating men with a culebrita (little snake) but Zlatan Ibrahimovic needs to practice his technique:
