What is a rabona?
Kicking the ball with your striking leg wrapped behind your standing leg — a flashy way to cross or shoot without turning your body around. Looks absurd, occasionally genius.
Explain further
Here are the mechanics. Normally you kick the ball with the leg on the same side as the direction you want to send it. The rabona flips that: you plant your standing foot beside the ball, then swing your kicking leg behind and around the back of that standing leg to strike it. The upshot is that you can hit the ball toward your "wrong" side without ever turning your hips or shoulders to face it. Done right, your legs look knotted together, yet the ball flies out clean.
The reason a player bothers is usually angle. Say a right-footed player is running down the left wing and wants to whip in a cross. The natural option is to chop the ball back onto the right foot, which costs time and lets defenders close in. The rabona delivers that right-footed cross while still moving forward, catching the defense off guard. It is also, frankly, a show-off move that earns roars from the crowd.
The name comes from Argentina, where in 1948 forward Ricardo Infante scored with one; a magazine cover likened him to a student skipping school ("hacerse la rabona"). It is often dismissed as pure flash, but at the top level it is a genuine, very high-risk tool. Mishit it and you simply fall over.