Here, though, comes the puzzle. Robben has been cutting left for years. His intent is apparent to all. Defenders know exactly what is in his mind, precisely what is coming, and yet remain powerless to stop it.

To Robben, two factors explain his continued success. Timing, he said in an interview with a handful of British newspapers last month, is one key: “If you do it at the right time, it still surprises them.” Variation, he has previously suggested, is equally important. “Doing the same thing over and over again without variation will not work,” he said. “If you never pass or dribble or go on the outside, cutting inside will stop working.”

To Schmelzer — who has had to deal with Robben in direct, face-to-face competition more than any other opponent — there is something else, however. He has noticed that Robben has leaned more heavily on his favored move in recent years, using the wing as a decoy to “open the path to the center.” It still works, though, because he “recognizes it when you block his path, and then he reacts accordingly; that is what makes him special.”

It is that ability to improvise that Ricardo Rodriguez identified, too. Rodriguez, a Swiss defender now with A.C. Milan, knows Robben almost as well as Schmelzer. According to Gracenote Sports, he has faced him 11 times during his career, in his time with Wolfsburg and F.C. Zurich.