The move was demonstrated by Brazilian footballer
Pelé during the
1970 FIFA World Cup match against
Uruguay. In the second half, Brazilian centre-forward
Tostão played a through pass to Pelé as a counter-attack started. Sprinting up the middle, Pelé was immediately confronted with the Uruguayan goalkeeper
Ladislao Mazurkiewicz who came off his line quickly. Pelé got there first and fooled Mazurkiewicz by not touching the ball, causing it to roll to the goalkeeper's left, while Pelé went to the goalkeeper's right. Pelé's move is a variant of the "selling the dummy"
feint – letting the ball go
around a defender then also circling the opponent, rather than following the straight path of a pass or loose ball, and can be useful in tight situations. It is discussed in
Scientific Soccer of the Seventies by soccer historian Kenneth MacDonald, who also discusses Pelé's contribution in Brazil's 1970 World Cup victory in detail. Swedish player
Jesper Blomqvist managed to perform a variant of the runaround move with more success, adding a fake, that resulted in a goal when his
IFK Göteborg played
Helsingborgs IF in the
Allsvenskan in 1995. Blomqvist relied more on deception than Pelé. Whereas the Brazilian had to move with utmost speed to avoid Mazurkiewicz, Blomqvist had more time and used a deceptive shuffling of the feet. Receiving an excellent through pass, the Swede confused the approaching keeper – letting the ball run – and
faking left, while sprinting right, around his opponent. He collected the ball on the other side and finished with an easy goal. As demonstrated by both Blomqvist and Pelé, the runaround move can thus work in "emergency" situations where speed and split-second timing are all, or where there is more time and space to fake out an opponent. In both scenarios, it can lead to spectacular results. ==See also==