The Man with the Golden Arms

If a player has one incredible talent, but all the other parts of his game are simply mediocre, is he still a great player? That’s the question that has followed Rory Delap throughout his career, and will likely dog him long after he hangs his boots up.

The Stoke City midfielder can do something few others in football can do – launch the ball via a throw-in up to 40 meters, and at speeds of 40mph. The weapon is so dangerous that Stoke manager Tony Pulis has built his team’s tactics around it. At the same time, Pulis has worked with Delap on sharpening his throw-ins so that their trajectories are as flat as possible, making them even more problematic for defenders and goalkeepers alike.

Another big advantage is that, unlike free kicks, you can’t be offside from a throw-in. As Delap himself has noted, “If it’s done right, there is no way of defending it. It doesn’t matter what team we are up against, it’s going to work if I hit the right areas with the ball.”

All that hard work has paid off. In the current campaign, Delap’s throw-ins have been responsible for at least 10 of Stoke’s goals. Two of those came against Manchester City –which proves the point that it really doesn’t matter how much you prepare against them, Delap’s sling shots are practically impossible to defend.

In seasons past, his throw-ins have led to a few goals that have been absolutely pivotal to Stoke avoiding relegation. (So does that make him worth as much as, say, £20 million?)

All of this begs the question: Why isn’t more attention put into developing a player’s throw-in technique. (Be careful, though!) On average, a team takes five times as many throw-ins per game as it does corners – so imagine if every team had someone who could throw like Delap.

Some football purists, like Arsene Wenger, have called the technique (pardon the pun) underhanded. But when the Italian Carlo Parola introduced the bicycle kick into the European game back in the 1950s, no one complained it was unfair. And before long everyone was giving it a go. Will the same ever hold true for Delap’s sling-shot throw-in?

Rory Delap lines up another long throw special