Bale celebrates in front of the home fans after scoring his second free kick against Lyon

Gareth Bale managed it twice against Lyon on Thursday.

It bamboozles goalkeepers and anyone without a sound grip of chaos theory.

So far, it seems, only four men on the planet can hit dipping, long-range free-kicks which swerve both ways. They are the culmination of more than a century of sporting genius.

The technique borrows heavily from the non-spinning pitching style used by Eddie Cicotte for the Boston Red Sox early in the 20th Century.

Indeed, the term “knuckling” was coined because he held the ball in his knuckles, rather than his fingers, to achieve the effect.

Coventry’s Ernie Hunt and Willie Carr are part of the tale. They pioneered the use of top-spin in free-kicks – now the select few have honed the ability to achieve it without the need for the now-illegal donkey-kick to lift the ball off the ground first.

There are elements of the tennis serve in the mix and it was all brought together within the last decade by Lyon’s former star Juninho Pernambucano.

Since then, it is generally held that only Cristiano Ronaldo, intermittently Didier Drogba and now Bale have been able to copy him.