I don’t know if you’ve ever searched YouTube for “best goal ever” but the results are about as far from conclusive as it gets. The first result is the 24-minute BEST GOALS EVER ● Amazing Compilation ᴴᴰ, which clearly suffers from some severe indecision from the outset.
The second result is a kid scoring a free-kick in a local park with just his mate in goal to stop it, and the third is Roberto Carlos’ absurd volley from an angle of 2.3 degrees, somewhere near the corner flag. Clearly someone needs to take control.
Identifying the best goal ever scored, though, requires the spinning of several plates: context, execution, degree of difficulty, how-many-times-out-of-a-hundredness, all that sort of thing.
The only sensible way to approach it is to separate out the most common types of goal and attempt to pin down their most definitive example: the goal that, if an alien descended from outer space and demanded to know what the best penalty of all time was, you’d most likely point them towards. Ready? No? Let’s begin.
Volley: Tony Yeboah, 1995
There have been more important volleys, more beautiful volleys, and plenty of equally emphatic volleys that don’t count because they bounced beforehand and people don’t like it if you call them volleys if they bounced beforehand.
Anyway, tempting as it was to settle on Marco van Basten’s Euro ‘88 effort against the Soviet Union - the intent of which you’ll never be able to convince everyone - there’s something a bit too pleasant, too graceful, about it. Volleys should be violent, shock-and-awe affairs.
With that in mind, Tony Yeboah’s millimetre-perfect adjustment of his Olympic sprinter’s body to belt the ball in off David James’ crossbar from 30 yards has no equal. The trajectory is perfect - arcing just enough to lend it some style, flat enough to cannon in satisfyingly off the woodwork - and, above all, it passes the ultimate test of being able to watch it 300 times in succession without getting bored.
Top corner screamer: Ronnie Radford, 1972
Once again, if we manoeuvre the vague criteria around a bit, we are left with only one option. It’s one thing to arrow an overengineered £200 Nike ball into the top corner off a reinforced semi-synthetic grass surface in 2017. It’s quite another for a fifth-tier player from the 1970s to summon the strength to clear a cannonball out of an FA Cup quagmire in the 85th minute.
Ronald “Ronnie” Radford: hello, old friend.
There are other more frivolous aspects at play: John Motson’s commentary (so good that he should go down in the record books as providing the assist), Radford’s block tackle that sums up English football’s lingering obsession with “wanting it more”, the oddly sophisticated one-two that had no place amid the muddy slapstick of that cup tie, the celebration, everything.
Oh, and it turns out that the best goal of all time to have only been filmed from one camera angle...actually has a second camera angle. Pack it all up, football is complete.
Chip: Philippe Albert, 1996
“Icing the cake” is one of football’s most delicious metaphors, deployed only when a comprehensive win - already beyond doubt - is crowned with a moment of effortless, pressure-free, salt-in-the-wound glory.
That is where the chip over the goalkeeper comes into its own and so, at 4-0 up with seven minutes to go, Philippe Albert’s chip over a stranded Peter Schmeichel is the only choice.
It has all the necessary ingredients of the sub-genre: enough disguise, a goalkeeper stood in the most powerless position possible, the ball sliding down the back of the net rather than bouncing first, and Newcastle 5 Manchester United 0.
One-on-one: Ronaldo, 1998
Somewhere on the spectrum of one-on-one finishing (from, say, Alan Shearer’s no-nonsense rifling to Diego Maradona’s goalline piss-taking) there needs to be a player who is somehow simultaneously capable of no nonsense and maximum nonsense.
One-on-ones don’t need to be dragged out - just complete the transaction and move on, but with a dollop of ritual humiliation too. So that leaves us with Ronaldo, UEFA Cup final, 1998:
By the time you get to the 17th loop of this goal, it might be time to focus simply on Lazio’s goalkeeper Luca Marchegiani. He’s already advanced off his line with the sort of confidence of a man facing peak Ronaldo at 2-0 down in a cup final, but his attempt to keep track of the ball while our hero swings his hips right, left and right again is as compelling as the goalscorer himself.
Header: Basile Boli, 1993
Football history is suffering from a distinct shortage of definitive headers. Roy Keane’s glancer against Juventus ticks a few boxes, as does Ruud Gullit’s dreadlock-enhanced bullet against the Soviets in 1988. Be it towering, diving, stooping or looping, it’s peculiarly hard to pin down the definitive act of heading the ball home.
If you think about it for a moment, out of context, heading the ball at all (let alone scoring from it) is a very strange thing to do. The standout candidate here, therefore, perhaps needs to sum up the mindless bravery/optimism involved in choosing to score with your head.
Basile Boli - whose head also decided the 1993 Champions League final against Milan, and quite brutally sent a shell-shocked Stuart Pearce to the turf in a heap during Euro ‘92 - is therefore our man.
Not only does he start the move against Paris Saint-Germain with a header, he ventures forward (never, ever a bad idea for a centre-back) and meets the eventual cross with his head from 18 yards out. Beautiful? No. Slightly unhinged? Absolutely.
Free-kick: Roberto Carlos, 1997
There is nothing left to be said about this. There have been some vastly, consistently superior free-kick takers before and after Roberto Carlos finally, finally won his personal Euromillions, but none of them have scored a more memorable one than this.
And the ballboy ducks because he thinks he’s about to have his head taken off. So, it’s perfect.
Penalty: Kevin Pressman, 1995
Here it is, the iconic penalty they talk about all over the world, years later. Antonin Pane...no, it’s Kevin Pressman vs Wolves, FA Cup 4th round replay, 1995.
Goalkeepers taking penalties is still, somehow, a novel spectacle. With English football in the relatively early stages of its permanent penalty shootout hang-up, here was a 13-stone goalkeeper in a vomit-inspired goalkeeper top demonstrating that the best way to convert from 12 yards is to essentially take a goal-kick as hard as possible.
“Wha-hoh!” blurted Sky’s Andy Gray, complemented by Martin Tyler’s rather more measured observation of “GET. IN.”, finished off by Pressman’s utterly non-plussed reaction to what has just taken place.
Solo goal: Diego Maradona, 1986
Did you come here to be surprised? Erm...OK, here’s That Diego Maradona Goal from an angle that you’ve probably only watched it from twice.
Some might wish to stake a claim for George Weah’s slaloming effort against Verona (about as spectacular as a 1,500m race), or Zlatan Ibrahimovic’s cartoon goal against the cartoon defence of NAC Breda, or Saeed Al-Owairan’s ricochet-tastic goal against Belgium at USA ‘94. All of those are incorrect.
Actually, it probably should be that Lionel Messi one, shouldn’t it? Y’know, that one against Getafe, that didn’t happen in a World Cup quarter-final on what looked like the hottest day in recorded human history, scored past one of the best goalkeepers of all time.
Team goal: Brazil, 1970
Sorry, again, we have to bow down to the weight of history. All I can offer you by way of originality is Carlos Alberto’s goal in 8-bit, pixellated form instead of the woozy satellite-link blur of the original.
But there are subtleties to enjoy here: Clodoaldo, having slalomed almost pointlessly around half the Italian team, then pointing where the next pass should go. Pelé’s layoff, somehow both the easiest and the most perfectly-weighted pass ever made. And that microscopic bobble off the Azteca turf, that turned what probably would have been a scuffed effort wide into one of the most iconic goals ever scored. By a right-back.
Own goal: Wayne Hatswell, 2000
And finally. This is yet another sub-genre of goal that boasts so many candidates to be its finest, but the winner has something all the others don’t. So many own goals are comical, but also unavoidable: a split-second decision gone catastrophically wrong under pressure.
Jamie Pollock - and his sort of reverse Matt Le Tissier tribute act of an own goal - could, and perhaps should be the own goal you show to a visitor from another planet when they ask how bad humans can be at professional football.
And yet…
What separates Wayne Hatswell’s own goal from all others - even Pollock’s - is the amount of time he has on his hands to weigh up the situation. Having assessed his options, and without an opposition player within ten yards of him, he hammers it - properly, 100% batters it - into the top corner of his own net.
If the decisive voting criterion is the number of teammates who instantly put their hands to their heads in disbelief, Wayne Hatswell - for want of a better word - is the winner.
