No matter what you achieve in sport, your moments of failure will follow you around for just as long as the great successes.
Few conversations of Donald Bradman are complete without a mention of the dismissal that cost him a test average of more than 100. José Aldo’s record-breaking reign at the top of the featherweight division in the UFC is now secondary to the 13-second knockout at the hands of Conor McGregor that saw him dethroned. And Rob Green’s huge second-half save against the United States in 2010 is not remembered nearly as well as the error earlier on that led to Clint Dempsey’s equaliser for the Stars and Stripes.
The factor that lessens footballing responsibility – the team element having the capacity to override individual brilliance – also works in reverse: no matter how great the build-up and the effort put in by the other 10 players, the failure of the eleventh can bring it all crashing down.
Often this will play out in the form of a goalkeeping error, such as that committed by Green or, two-and-a-bit years prior, compatriot Scott Carson. But failure at the other end of the pitch can prove just as dramatic, and just as memorable for the wrong reasons.
Here are five examples of the most painful misses in football, where the ease of a chance intersects with the size of the stage for maximum pain. They might not be the worst misses, but they’re the ones that – when all is considered – will have hurt the most.
Richard Morales – Uruguay v Senegal, 2002 World Cup
The emergence of Senegal was one of the major stories of the 2002 World Cup, a tournament which is unlikely to go down in history as one of the most memorable.
In their first-ever appearance in the tournament, Bruno Metsu’s team stunned holders France in their first game via a Pape Bouba Diop winner, before edging past Sweden to make the quarter-finals, where they were eventually stopped in their tracks by fellow surprise package Turkey. But it is easy to forget that they could – and should – have been eliminated in the group stage.
Victory over France and a draw with Denmark – helped by one of the all-time great team goals rounded off by Salif Diao – left Senegal needing just a point from their meeting with Uruguay to make it through to the knockout stages. For 45 minutes it was plain sailing, with Khalilou Fadiga and a brace from Diop giving them a three-goal lead, but in the end, they were grateful for one of the worst ever misses in World Cup history.
It was all set up for Richard Morales to be the hero. Coming off the bench for Sebastián Abreu at half-time, the Nacional striker had brought Uruguay back into the game before Diego Forlán’s volley and a penalty from Álvaro Recoba brought the South Americans level.
Suddenly Senegal were clinging on, and when Tony Sylva could only parry a long-range drive back into danger, Morales couldn’t miss.
Or so we thought.
Yakubu – Nigeria v South Korea, 2010 World Cup
The stakes might not have been quite as high as with Morales, but Yakubu’s miss against South Korea was somehow even more inexplicable.
Perhaps it was the former Portsmouth and Middlesbrough striker’s normally clinical demeanour in front of goal that made it so shocking, but this is a miss that – when it came up in conversation during my appearance on the Talking Tactics podcast – taught me that at least one Super Eagles fan refuses to even mention the player’s name when reflecting on the blunder.
While Nigeria may have made the last 16 of the World Cup in 2014, their squad four years prior arguably carried more expectation. The competition was being played in Africa for the first time, [MANAGER’s] squad had been unlucky to miss out on that year’s AFCON final, and the draw was favourable, with a group containing Argentina, Greece and South Korea falling firmly into the ‘manageable’ category.
Narrow defeats to Greece and Argentina might have spelt elimination in other circumstances, but the dominance of the South Americans meant the Super Eagles could still make it through with a win in their final game. And, while Yakubu’s penalty might have brought things level at 2-2 with 20 minutes to play, it didn’t come close to making up for his earlier misstep.
The miss might not have been quite as late and dramatic as some others, but many of us are still left scratching our heads at how he managed to put his effort off-target. Every time you watch it back, even with full knowledge of what follows, you still expect the net to bulge. If Yakubu wanted to be the heir to Kanu when it came to leading Nigeria to glory, he at least replicated one of the other more famous moments of his predecessor’s career.
Chris Iwelumo – Scotland v Norway, 2010 World Cup qualifying
For all the discussion around England’s failure to qualify for Euro 2008, it’s easy to forget that Scotland were just as close to making it to the finals in Austria and Switzerland.
Their 24-point haul was one more than Steve McClaren’s side managed, and only a late collapse stopped them finishing above France and earning a play-off place. As a result, hopes were high going into the qualifying campaign for the following World Cup, and their failure to make it to the play-off stage for that particular tournament has been traced back to one particularly woeful miss.
Chris Iwelumo was a late bloomer, earning his international debut for Scotland at the age of 30, but what could have been a dream start soon became a nightmare.
Shortly after replacing James McFadden in a qualifier at home to Norway, the Wolves frontman escaped unmarked at the back post as Gary Naysmith put in a low cross. Norwegian goalkeeper Jon Knudsen (who, incidentally, was also making his debut) couldn’t get there, but the apparent tap-in for Iwelumo proved anything but, as he somehow slotted the ball wide. Steven Fletcher’s reaction sums it up.
While Scotland’s entire campaign was one of disappointment, at least in comparison to the positivity we saw in the build-up to Euro 2008, that miss has an element of heartbreak; the moment the Scots reverted to type after a couple of years of excitement.
An extra two points might ultimately not have been enough for a play-off place but with several group games remaining there was a definite feeling of momentum being sapped. Scotland scored just four goals in their remaining five matches, nine in eight in Euro 2012 qualifying and eight in 10 as they failed to make it to the 2014 World Cup.
They haven’t even secured a top-two finish in a qualifying group since losing out to the Netherlands for a place at Euro 2004, and that run shows few signs of coming to an end anytime soon.
Chris Wondolowski – United States v Belgium, 2014 World Cup
An unlikely call-up can often change a team’s fortunes for the better, especially in the hyper-normal atmosphere of a World Cup. But when it came to the 2014 iteration of the tournament, Chris Wondolowski was more Theo Walcott than Toto Schillachi.
A year and a half before the finals in Brazil, Wondo was only on the fringes of United States manager Jürgen Klinsmann’s plans, despite beginning to come into his own as a Major League Soccer goalscorer. But that changed in the 2013 CONCACAF Gold Cup, where he appeared to have established himself as someone who could also do it on the international stage. So, while not the first choice in Brazil, he earned himself a place on the plane and ended up being thrown on against Belgium in the last 16.
It’s fair to say the US were up against it for much of the game, with Tim Howard dealing with everything that was thrown [admittedly pretty much directly] at him. Belgium racked up 17 shots on target (and 39 in total) over the course of 120 minutes, but Wondolowski had a golden opportunity to hand his team a smash-and-grab victory within 90.
When presented with a late chance in a game of this stature, some – most notably Robbie Keane against Germany in 2002 – embrace the pressure and show their class. Others, like Wondolowski, do the opposite.
Klinsmann’s men had given a supreme backs-against-the-wall performance and almost got their reward, but the extra period proved too much, with Kevin de Bruyne and Romelu Lukaku finding the net before Julian Green struck a late consolation. Had it been Green rather than Wondolowski on the end of that chance, it might have been a very different story indeed.
Gonzalo Higuain – Argentina v Chile, 2015 Copa Ámerica
If the Argentina squad of the last few years are seen as international football’s premier bottlers then Higuaín is their very own pipette, distilling that essence into its purest form.
For most players, missing when clean through on goal in a World Cup final would be the nadir, but the former Real Madrid and Napoli frontman went one better – or maybe one worse – 12 months later.
If you want to give him the benefit of the doubt, you could argue Ezequiel Lavezzi put a little too much on his ball across the face of goal, but it was still easier to score than to miss. Especially for a man with 29 club goals to his name the season before, who would go on to exceed that tally in the following two seasons.
But there is something about pulling on an Argentina shirt that has a strange effect on a player. By rights, Lionel Messi should have won a World Cup and Maxi Rodriguez should not have scored one of the competition’s greatest ever goals, but instead, the opposite is true.
Higuaín has done great things before and since, and when he retires he will be looked back on as one of the best goal scorers of his era, but the lasting memory for many fans will be of failure on the grandest of stages.
