When you think of the perfect free-kick, you probably imagine David Beckham against Greece or that Roberto Carlos effort against France.

What you probably don’t think of is maths – but perhaps you should. Scientists have come up with what they say is the formula for the perfect set-piece.

Jasmine Sandhu, a PhD student from University of Leicester specialising in Physics with Space Science and Technology, said: “This formula may seem complicated, but in reality it is a mathematical expression of what good footballers do every time they line up a free kick or a penalty.

“For instance, if a player standing 15 metres away from the by-line kicked an average football so that it was travelling at a velocity of 35 metres per second and had an angular velocity of 10 revolutions per second, the ball would bend around 5 metres towards the goal.”

Here is the formula in all its glory…

So there you go – you’ve got everything you need to be the next Dimitri Payet.