http://www.collegescholarships.org/scholarships/sports/soccer.htm
What is the perfect kick?
Ideally, you want your kick to be both fast, accurate and unpredictable. If you watch professional soccer highlights it looks like the ball is following one trajectory and then it changes its trajectory almost like magic. The way to get your kick to do this is by giving it the correct rotation so that it interacts with frictional forces in the air to alter the trajectory of the ball.
How to achieve the perfect kick
The kick itself is an inelastic collision between the ball and the kicker's foot. This means we will use the law of conservation of momentum. Momentum of ball + foot before = Momentum of ball + foot after. In general this means that if you have a higher velocity when your foot is in contact with the ball, it will also have a higher velocity. Once the ball is kicked it will follow the rules of projectile motion, since it is undergoing no forces except for gravity. The way to give your ball this change in trajectory that makes professional player's shots so unpredictable is called the Magnus effect. In short, as you kick the ball with a rotation, the velocities of the air around the ball will change due to that rotation, causing a change in pressure on different sides around the ball. This change in pressure results in the ball changing trajectory since a force from the air is acting upon the ball (Newton's first law). In general you want to kick a ball to the right of its center to give the ball a rotation that will curve it to the left, and vice versa.
Ideally, you want your kick to be both fast, accurate and unpredictable. If you watch professional soccer highlights it looks like the ball is following one trajectory and then it changes its trajectory almost like magic. The way to get your kick to do this is by giving it the correct rotation so that it interacts with frictional forces in the air to alter the trajectory of the ball.
How to achieve the perfect kick
The kick itself is an inelastic collision between the ball and the kicker's foot. This means we will use the law of conservation of momentum. Momentum of ball + foot before = Momentum of ball + foot after. In general this means that if you have a higher velocity when your foot is in contact with the ball, it will also have a higher velocity. Once the ball is kicked it will follow the rules of projectile motion, since it is undergoing no forces except for gravity. The way to give your ball this change in trajectory that makes professional player's shots so unpredictable is called the Magnus effect. In short, as you kick the ball with a rotation, the velocities of the air around the ball will change due to that rotation, causing a change in pressure on different sides around the ball. This change in pressure results in the ball changing trajectory since a force from the air is acting upon the ball (Newton's first law). In general you want to kick a ball to the right of its center to give the ball a rotation that will curve it to the left, and vice versa.