Acrobatic soccer

Footballers have always been partial to showing off.

Even so, it’s fair to say that Manchester United player Nani Cunha’s jaw-dropping display of gymnastics after scoring against Tottenham may have set the benchmark in photogenic look-at-me goal celebrations.
Typically, these fall into one of three categories. First, there’s something from the Dancefloor, epitomised by Peter Crouch’s gangly robot dance, a routine perfected while larging it with the lads and given its definitive expression with a private performance for Prince William at an England training session.
Ronaldinho has his patented “hang loose” gesture, a surfing/hip-hop hand thing that he devotes a bewilderingly large portion of his autobiography to talking about.
Everton’s Tim Cahill popularised the shadow-box-with-the- corner-flag routine, which is a step up from Nigeria’s Finidi George, who used the flag as a prop in his “urinating dog” routine at the 1994 World Cup.
Cameroon striker Roger Milla’s corner-flag lambada at the 1990 World Cup kicked the dance celebrations off – a trend that reached its nadir with the Aylesbury FC waddling ducks, a group of beefy men waggling their arms in unison.
Related, but altogether angrier, is the Furious Defiant Gesture. Craig Bellamy celebrated scoring against Barcelona by pretending to thrash someone with a golf club, having been accused of doing just that to a team-mate before the game.
Robbie Fowler feigned snorting cocaine off the chalk line of the penalty area in response to crowd taunts about rumours of drug-taking.
Korean Ahn Jung-Hwang did an impression of a speed skater after scoring against the US at the 2002 World Cup, a reference to the disqualification of Korean skater Kin Dong-Sung at the Winter Olympics that handed the gold medal to an American.
Most common is the Bewildering Display of Athletic Prowess. Julius Agahowa, now of Wigan, has been known to perform up to 12 high-speed cartwheels.
Lomana LuaLua, once of Portsmouth and Newcastle, celebrates with an apparently endless string of backward handsprings (in 2006 he had to be helped from the field after injuring his ankle doing his routine against Arsenal).
At the stodgier end, Robbie Keane continues to showcase a forward roll followed by cheeky bow-and-arrow pose.
Why do they do it? For almost a century footballers seemed happy enough with a terse handshake and knee-high jog to the halfway line.
The new exhibitionism has a lot to do with television. Modern players rehearse their celebrations with the intention of getting on the telly: highlights, the news, maybe even the Match of the Day credits. It’s the footballer’s party piece, his karaoke moment, his Big Brother audition tape.
Nani, at least, has something worth showing off. His move is a display of capoeira, the fashionable dance-fight martial art, which he mastered growing up in Lisbon. Enjoy it while you can: perhaps because his routine is known, technically, as the “death leap”, Nani has been politely asked by his manager never to do it again.