Roberto Carlos
Left Back · Real Madrid · Brazil
About Roberto Carlos
Roberto Carlos is the most adventurous and exciting full-back in football history. His thunderous left-foot free-kick against France in the 1997 Tournoi de France — which bent so sharply that it defied physics — is the most discussed free-kick in football history. He spent 11 years at Real Madrid, winning four La Liga titles and three Champions Leagues.
Roberto Carlos's story
Garça to Glory
Roberto Carlos grew up in Garça, São Paulo (BRA), and was initially rejected by clubs for being too small — at 168cm, he was considered too short for a left-back. He overcame the doubters at Internazionale and then Real Madrid, where he became one of the most influential players in the club's history across 11 years.
The Impossible Free-Kick
In the 1997 Tournoi de France against France, Roberto Carlos struck a free-kick that was 35 metres from goal, to the right of the wall, so far out that the French goalkeeper Fabien Barthez didn't even move — he assumed it was going wide. It curved 3 metres around the wall and into the top corner. Scientists later published a paper on the aerodynamics involved.
Galáctico Era
At Real Madrid alongside Figo, Zidane, Ronaldo, Beckham, and Raúl, he was the defensive cornerstone of the Galácticos. Despite his attacking instincts, he was also a superb defensive player. He left Madrid (ESP) in 2007 and spent his twilight years in Turkey, Russia, and Brazil.
Did you know?
- 🍌 His 1997 free-kick against France was so aerodynamically unusual that a team of physicists from Brazil published a scientific paper explaining why it curved the way it did.
- 📏 At 168cm, he was told multiple times as a youth player that he was too small to be a professional full-back. He went on to become the greatest left-back of his generation.
- 👨👩👧👦 Married three times; has several children and settled in Turkey during a late-career stint, then returned to Brazil.
- 🏆 He won three Champions League titles with Real Madrid — in 1998, 2000, and 2002 — as well as the 2002 World Cup with Brazil.
- 🤝 His partnership with Cafu for Brazil — the two overlapping full-backs who could both score goals — is universally considered the greatest pair of full-backs in World Cup history.
- ⚡ His 100m sprint time was clocked at 10.8 seconds — faster than many Olympic sprinters at the time, making him one of the fastest footballers ever timed.
- 🌟 Pelé named him in the FIFA 100 and ranked him alongside Cafu as the greatest full-backs he had ever seen.
- 📊 He scored 71 goals from left-back for Real Madrid — a figure that would be respectable for most forwards, let alone a defender.
- 🌍 After retiring, he became a Real Madrid global ambassador and also co-owned Sivasspor in Turkey — one of the first Brazilian players to invest in European club ownership.
Honours
- La Liga x4: Real Madrid (1997, 2001, 2003, 2007)
- UEFA Champions League x3: Real Madrid (1998, 2000, 2002)
- FIFA World Cup: Brazil (2002)
- FIFA 100: Named by Pelé as one of 125 greatest living players (2004)
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