Goals, Goals, Goals

Tucking it away, slotting home, ‘back of the net’; football’s all about goals, isn’t it?

It doesn’t matter how they go in. Dodgy deflections or thirty yard thunderbolts, goalie gaffes or goalmouth scrambles, they all count.

When conjuring up my own brightest memories of goals over the years, I think they basically split into three different categories: late winners/Cup clinchers, life-affirming stunners and the ones which make me smile in recognition of their sheer impudence or originality.

The famous end-of-season last-gasp efforts by Sergio Aguero (2012) and Michael Thomas (1989) wouldn’t make a YouTube montage of Greatest Ever Goals ('pleaz like and subscribe') but for significance they can’t be beaten. Similarly, many goals which decided Cup finals at home or abroad linger long in my memory, from Charlie George’s strike for Arsenal in ’71 to Lawrie Sanchez’s flick header for Wimbledon in ’88 or Iniesta’s pounce to claim Spain’s World Cup triumph in 2010.

Whirling curling shots from distance are ten-a-penny these days. Every goal in very match played is captured for posterity, a far cry from the old Match of the Day era of two games a week. Nevertheless, Dad and I would religiously select our own 1-2-3 Goals of the Month from the meagre list, culminating in the Goal of the Season around the time of the Cup Final. Some of those early winners are ingrained in my brain, such as Mickey Walsh's strike for Blackpool in 1975, Justin Fashanu’s flick, twist and thump for Norwich five years later and, of course, Ronnie Radford’s Motson-maker in the 1971-72 FA Cup.

The onset of the Premier League, the exponential expansion of camera angles and balls aerodynamically designed to prance and pirouette to the striker’s tune brought an even greater number of mouth-watering goals to my TV screen. In the mid-Nineties, Leeds’ Tony Yeboah and Southampton’s Matt leTissier were forever scoring individual masterpieces while, for Arsenal, Thierry Henry and Dennis Bergkamp would re-define the art of finishing, later finessed by the incomparable Lionel Messi.

We all love an acrobatic volley, of course. Anyone with any experience of playing football knows how insanely difficult an overhead ‘bicycle’ kick is to pull off successfully, so when I see one perfectly executed, I have to stand and applaud. Gareth Bale even did it in the 2018 Champions League Final. However, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, never one to shrink from the toughest challenge, produced one of the very best and most ambitious for Sweden against England in 2012. But when an ‘overhead’ is delivered by a player from my own club, it’s even more special. Thank you, Trevor Sinclair!

Free-kicks have never been more important to teams. With the defensive wall still expected to line up ten yards from the ball, it is much easier these days to loft it up and over. The hard bit, of course, is to get the ball to dip under the bar. Some have avoided this dilemma by mischievously taken advantage of leaping defenders to fire home under the wall, and I won’t forget a few brilliant Brazilians’ success with bending it around the barrier. Rivelino was an early exponent but I doubt even he could have executed a banana kick as well as Roberto Carlos did in ’97. Phenomenal.

It’s not all about the boot, of course. Crosses, corners and free-kicks often seek out someone’s head to apply the final touch in the box. In my younger days, forwards would struggle to power in a header from further then the penalty spot but modern plastic balls are much lighter. One of the first goals off the bonce to stick in my mind was Uwe Seeler’s back-header against England in the 1970 World Cup. Malcolm Macdonald made the art look easy, scoring four headers against Cyprus five years later and in the 2014 World Cup Robin Van Persie’s winged flier for Holland showed that the head can be just as exciting a weapon as the foot. Occasionally a conventional-looking header becomes legendary when delivered by a master. Cristiano Ronaldo’s exemplary leap, hang and power was such a moment, breaking Welsh hearts in the 2016 Euros. How could anyone defend against that?

Solo goals often make me gasp but team moves can be more satisfying just as a delicious main course is ultimately more edifying than the instant appeal of a post-match burger and chips. In recent years, Spain and Barcelona have delivered many, of which this Iniesta-completed work of art is a perfect example. Wenger-era Arsenal were also often criticised for trying to walk the ball into the net when a more direct approach may have been more effective. However, when they had an end product, they could be beautiful.

Novelty value also makes some goals particularly memorable. One of my favourites is Ernie Hunt’s free-kick from Willie Carr’s two-footed back flick for Coventry in 1971. We certainly tried to copy that one for days on end! Mercifully it was not disallowed but it was kinda sad that the double-foot free-kick was subsequently outlawed. There’s nothing wrong with penalty-takers opting for a gentle dink instead of firing at the top corner. The ‘Panenka’ can go horribly wrong if the ‘keeper stands his ground but, when star players choose a chip in a high-pressure game, I doff my cap, as in this Zidane instance during the 2006 World Cup final.

One of the most famously audacious goals in the 1990s pretty much launched the career of one of England’s most celebrated football icons. Who can forget watching on MOTD when David Beckham lobbed Wimbledon’s Neil Sullivan from the halfway line in 1996?

Individual brilliance comes in many forms but two of my favourite goals were straight from the ‘out of nothing’ manual. George Best’s incredible acceleration and swivelled finish for Man U in ’71 was breathtaking but I will never forget watching England’s live game against Chile in ’98 when Marcelo Salas’ control and volley almost literally took my breath away. I must have screamed “What a goal!” on countless occasions but this deserved all the hyperbole. They may all count but some are definitely better than others. 

Foreigers play abroad, too

The Champions League is back on the box, spread across umpteen channels and timeslots, but it wasn't always so.  For many years, my only opportunity to watch European clubs in action were in competitive matches against English opposition.

In the Seventies and Eighties, Football League clubs were regulars in the European Cup, UEFA Cup and Cup-Winners-Cup finals which had a fair chance to be snapped up by the BBC or ITV come May or June. Thus my younger self occasionally caught the likes of Bayern Munich, Borussia Moenchengladbach, Anderlecht, Valencia, FC Brugge, Roma or Benfica, featuring stars like Falcao, Beckenbauer, Camacho and Kempes. I probably saw – in black and white – the great Ajax team play Inter Milan in 1972 when Cruyff and co were in a purple patch.

It seems strange to think that Spain’s La Liga or the European Cup (now Champions League) wasn’t always dominated by Real Madrid and Barcelona, nor that Paris St Germain didn’t always win Ligue 1 or Juventus and Bayern Munich had, respectively, Serie A and the Bundesliga in their generously-proportioned back pockets. Real didn’t even hold that humungous hunk of silver at all between 1966 and 1998, and Barca had to wait until 1992 for their very first European Cup triumph.

In the Eighties and Nineties, Italy was the central focus of European club football. Serie A was the richest league on the continent, the prime destination for many of the most celebrated world players, including Brits such as Trevor Francis and Graeme Souness (Sampdoria), Ray Wilkins (Milan), David Platt (various), Ian Rush (Juventus) and, for three injury- and controversy-plagued seasons, Paul Gascoigne (Lazio).

It was when Gazza forsook Spurs for the cultural delights of Rome that Serie A attracted a bigger buzz amongst English football supporters and media alike. Channel 4, never a channel to mix with mainstream sports, took a gamble on broadcasting live matches on Sunday afternoons so we could see what all the fuss was about. I don’t think Dad and I cottoned on at first. However, with the new-fangled Premiership surrendering its soul to Rupert Murdoch’s fledgling Sky, to which we were seriously antipathetic, we found a new home for football after Mum’s roast dinner.

Football Italia altered my impressions of the Italian game in all sorts of ways. I’d previously had it drummed into me that it was dour and defensive, all catenaccio, designed to stifle attacking flair and generate a glut of goalless draws. I soon realised it wasn’t. Italian ‘calcio’ was about more than merely the back-line brilliance of Paolo Maldini, Alessandro Costacurta, Pietro Vierchowod and Giuseppe Bergomi; the Baggios, Francesco Totti, Attilo Lombardo, Alessandro del Piero and imports including Zinedine Zidane (Juve), Gabriel Batistuta (Fiorentina), Zvonomir Boban (Milan) and Marcelo Salas (Lazio) were amongst the forwards on display.

Another stereotype ripped up and chucked on the fire was that it’s always hot and sunny in Italy. It was partly disappointing yet also somewhat heartening to sit in our lounge and watch, say, Parma versus Sampdoria in cold, driving February rain every bit as miserable as our own. Under James Richardson’s presentation, the programme was far more cheery, and Football Italia also ventured outside the stadia for a cultural and culinary break, albeit not without some intelligent humour.

In the end, the fact that Serie A football was not much different from our own Premier League, with its own increasing number of top-notch foreign buys, killed our interest and, with other demands on my time, I stopped watching altogether. There remain, however, memories of AC Milan’s mastery under Fabio Capello in the early 1990s, the highlight being their European Cup success – shown on BBC – in 1994. Several years later I enjoyed reading Tim Parks’ book A Season with Verona which details the experience of following the frailties and fortunes of the Hellas Verona club, reviving images of those games, crowds and banners I’d once watched on Football Italia.

In the early twenty-first century, ITV’s Champions League coverage occasionally deviated from the usual dull preoccupation with Manchester United, Arsenal and Chelsea to showcase some extraordinary matches. Those Tuesday and Wednesday evening live broadcasts were by no means regular dates for me. Nevertheless, I did tune in to watch Monaco’s breathtaking destruction of a galactico-laden Real Madrid (Ronaldo, Beckham, Zidane, Figo et al) in a 2004 quarter-final to win on away goals. It was also a rare privilege to watch the French side meet the similarly unheralded Porto of Jose Mourinho in the final. I didn’t know who to support so didn’t mind when the Portuguese ran out 3-0 winners.

A year later I was on holiday in Sicily when Liverpool achieved their astonishing comeback against a Milan side which had ripped Gerrard and co so convincingly to shreds in the first half. Perversely unpatriotic as I am, I’d wanted the English team to lose. Our Italian courier told me afterwards that many of her countrymen and women were actually quite pleased Liverpool won on penalties because they hated the corrupt billionaire, far-right politician and Milan owner Silvio Berlusconi. Fair point!

In the last decade, the emphasis has shifted towards Spain as an alternative to the bloated beast that is the EPL. In particular, towards the cult of El Clasico and of Messi v Ronaldo. Even though I now live in a digital-subscribing household, the Sky and BT Sport channels featuring plentiful coverage of Spanish (or indeed French, Dutch and German) club football has been insufficient to lure me (or Angie) away from our domestic appetites of PL, soaps and thrillers.

It’s not that I don’t appreciate the genius of Lionel Messi. Quite by chance, one evening in March 2012 my channel-hopping led me to ITV as a backdrop to a tedious session of ironing. They were showing Barcelona’s Champions League fixture against Beyer Leverkusen and pretty soon my domestic god credentials were seriously bruised by the necessity to stop and watch what was unfolding. The champions were rampant. It wasn’t that the German side were atrocious; but whenever Pep Guardiola’s side attacked, they seemed to score. Prompted by Xavi, Iniesta and Fabregas, Messi scored five, finishing with such contemptuous ease I had to put the shirts aside and applaud. He couldn’t see me but I didn’t care. That’s how good he was. I had seen Messi with Argentina in the World Cup but here he was in his natural habitat, at the Nou Camp, a bird of paradise in red and blue plumage. I realised what I had been missing the past several years.

Since then, the Champions League has mainly been a battle between Real and Barca, with Atletico Madrid, Bayern, Juve and even Liverpool sneaking onto the top table when the opportunity presented itself. The 2014 final featured a Madrid derby in which Atletico shared equal billing. I fervently hoped they’d thwart Real’s push for La Decima, their much-vaunted tenth title, and it seemed my wish had been granted until Sergio Ramos powered an unstoppable injury-time header. Bale popped up on the far post to put Real ahead and who else but Ronaldo applied the coup de grace.

However impressive Pep’s latest charges, Manchester City, may appear, there’s always a certain appeal in snooping around the obscure fringe channels to spot contests in Barcelona, Breda, Bologna or Beijing, players adorned in exotic purple, green and white stripes or red and white quarters. Football is universal. Wherever the location, the grass is always green, the lines are white, fans sing, chant and wave banners and the emotions of joy, disappointment, indignation and fury are the same everywhere, regardless of local language or dialect. I’ve watched in hotel rooms around Europe, loving the ubiquitous manic Latin “Gooooooooaaaaaallllllllllll” commentary, even Thailand, and seen how TV football unites multinational audiences in many a continental bar. There’s more to the sport than the Premier League. Lots more.

World Cup Memories - 2018

And finally we come to 2018. For all the shenanigans around the selection of Russia as hosts, and the potential of the whole month being an almighty Putin vanity project, this World Cup has been celebrated as one of the most exciting in living memory.

Did we miss Italy or Holland? Not a jot. From the first night, when Russia’s much-maligned side smashed five against Saudi Arabia, to the six-goal finale, there was so much to enjoy. At home, participation in the global FIFA Fantasy league added an extra dimension. Amidst all the action there were many brow-furrowing hours spent contemplating transfers, captaincy selections, balancing the huge stars like Messi, Modric and Hazard with the less familiar names from Egypt, Colombia, Poland, etc. But really it was about the football!

The thrilling Iberian derby on day two left us licking our lips in anticipation of further riches. Against Portugal, Spain seemed to have done enough before Cristiano Ronaldo produced a trademark free-kick in the 88^th minute to complete his own hat-trick and a three-all draw. However, European champions Portugal were surprisingly weak and not even CR7 could haul them into the last eight. Apart from one sublime goal which only he could score, the other giant of the game, Lionel Messi, was also a subdued figure. His lacklustre, ageing Argentina side were awful against Croatia and they, too, bowed out in the second round.

The reigning champions Germany were also woefully off-form and were sensationally eliminated in Group F after losing to Mexico  (an excellent match) and South Korea. Meanwhile, the Germans’ 2014 bunnies Brazil had bounced back to their best in qualification and apart from a 1-1 draw with the Swiss, were looking ominously good. Coutinho provided some magic but I’m afraid their flamboyant forward Neymar will be remembered only for his pathetic diving and play-acting. His 10,000 volt jerks against Mexico will – sadly – live long in the memory. I missed Brazil’s quarter-final elimination at the hands of Belgium – attending India v England cricket at Cardiff – but, for all Neymar’s undoubted skills, I didn’t miss the preening prima donna at all in the final week.

Belgium had been rather fortunate themselves to meet Brazil. In their Round 2 fixture against Japan, I was enthralled by an amazing second half in which their unfancied opponents soon went two-up. With under half an hour left, Belgium seemed down and out yet ended up 3-2 winners after a fabulous injury time breakaway finished by Chadli. Phew!

Spain were also chock-full of household names, from De Gea to Iniesta, Pique to Busquets, Isco to Ramos. But, faced with the host nation and their fervent fans in the Round of 16, the superstars were surprisingly tamed. Penalties decided the matter and Russia advanced. It seems unthinkable that we will probably never again see many of these great players on the global stage.

Like Russia, Nobody had given England’s new-look side much chance of reaching the knockouts let alone challenging for the Cup itself. Only two of their wretched 2014 Eleven – Henderson and Sterling – were in the first-choice starting line-up. However, while Harry Kane was falling over and banging in the penalties, and Stones and Maguire were leading the defensive line, optimism built steadily. England slammed an unprecedented six past Panama and found themselves with a relatively simple path to the semis via Colombia (and a successful penalty shoot-out!) and Sweden. Suddenly, that refrain of “Football’s coming home” was everywhere. Massed streaming even sent The Lightning Seeds’ masterpiece of hope over expectation, ‘Three Lions’, back to number one in the charts after twenty-two years. Manager Gareth Southgate’s elegant waistcoat transformed fan fashion and even Kyle Walker proved popular.

In the semi-final versus Croatia at the Luzhniki Stadium, Kieran Trippier’s fifth minute free-kick sent the fan-zones delirious under a fountain of beer, but Luka Modric and his mates weren’t giving up. After the interval, Croatia clawed their way back into the game. Their efforts were rewarded when first the hard-working Perisic fashioned an equaliser, then Mandzukic nipped in behind Stones for the winner.

And so the tournament reached its climax in Moscow. Not with Brazil v England, as I had so naively predicted, but France v Croatia. On paper it appeared a delicious final but showpiece games are notorious for their ability to disappoint. As in so much of the 2018 World Cup, tradition was ripped up. With Modric pulling the strings, Rakitic and Perisic running with purpose and the full-backs haring down the flanks, Croatia ripped into the formidable French defence but couldn’t break through. I was aghast that France went one-up following a Griezmann dive. Perisic equalised then came another highly dubious penalty decision, this time courtesy of the controversial Video Assistant Referees (VAR). I began to lose interest when France widened the gap in the second half but had to admit a 4-2 World Cup Final is one to savour, whoever emerged the winner.

Like England, the redeveloped French team is remarkably young. Didier Deschamps was widely derided for omitting stars such as Martial, Lacazette and Payet but his squad delivered the goods. Their brilliant full-backs Pavard and Hernandez are only 22, the outstanding centre-back Varane is 25 and then of course there is the electrifying 19 year-old winger, Kylian Mbappe. The old guard of Messi, Ronaldo, Iniesta, Modric, Suarez, Cavani, Hummels and Marcelo probably won’t be around in four years’ time but a new generation of galacticos are already in place.

After Russia, the 2022 tournament will be a different kettle of fish. Located in the desert state of Qatar, dry as a bone but awash with cash for FIFA votes, it will take place in the heart of the European football season to avoid the searing summer heat. With the youthful players at their current disposal, France must fancy their chances once more. But if 2018 showed us anything, it is that the top nations can’t take anything for granted, even the champions. Four years is a long time but I’ll have to be patient. Roll on the next World Cup!