On the 15th of May, the final games of the English Premiership were played, and whilst the entire focus of the day was on who was going to be relegated (each of the bottom teams had, mathematically, the chance to still stay up if the results went their way - first time it had ever happened in the Premier League), on Match of the Day, the football roundup programme on later, came the forgotten Goal of the Season competition…
Ten goals. The best of English football this season.
The shape of the video went out when I cut it, so you’ll need a video player that can change the aspect ratio - BSPlayer’s a good one. Set it to 16:9 by right-clicking and you’re off
Rooney’s two volleys stand out from the season. The technique required to pull off a clean volley in both situations is very impressive, ball dropping from height, no prior touch and its in the back of the net. Roy of the Rovers football writ large. I’m going for the one against Middlesborough as the best because he pulls it off at pace. Very very few premiership footballers could score a goal like that.
Surely he scored another great goal this season to go with these two? He could have made it a clean sweep!
He scored twice in the FA Cup match against Middlesbrough, his other goal could easily have made it into the selection too - a lob from about 25-30 yards out, which curled just inside the post.
What I love about his volley against Newcastle is that for the few seconds before he slams it in the net, he’s mouthing off at the referee for a decision that he wasn’t happy with earlier - if you look towards the right-centre of the picture you can see them jogging along talking. Then the ball gets hung up in the air, Rooney forgets about the referee, and WHAM, it’s in. Fantastic.
With that volley, too, I think the huge amount of curl on the ball (it was going wide before it swerved back in) actually came out of necessity - if he’d hit it straight on, then because of the speed he was going at to get to it, plus the height it was at, it would have flown right into Row Z. As it was, he had to hit it on the side to get the topspin necessary to keep it low, and that made for a nice bit of bend as well.
I’m in agreement - with both those volleys, going at speed and managing to accurately and powerfully place them is a very hard feat indeed, and the fact that Rooney pulled it off twice is testament to his incredible talent.
The fact that he’s still only 19 and has two outstanding goals in the selection not only proves that he can cut it with the best of them at the moment, but gives me hope for his future in the national side, too… he’s already played a few international games and has been the best player on the pitch in many of them. Next World Cup, we’ll see a good mixture of experience and young talent in the England side… who knows?
I personally love Goal A, Patrik Berger’s. His back was to goal, he was a good 20-25 yards out. In that situation you just have to know, instinctively, where the goal is - and when you catch a volley perfectly, as he did, the topspin on it makes for spectacular dip in the path of the ball. That kind of goal just comes from completely out of the blue and stuns the crowd.
Goal I, Erik Edman’s for Tottenham, is amazing purely because of the distance he was from goal. While you sometimes see lobbed goals from that distance, you rarely see driven shots, because the power needed to keep the ball in the air for that long at that speed is hard to get with good accuracy too. Not only did he get it on target, but he got it in the postage stamp… great goal, that.