Goals of any hue still the great equaliser
But cometh August and cometh Mark Griffin of Dundalk, unveiling a jaw-dropping combination of skilful improvisation and clinical finishing to snatch the glory, even though his side lost the game 3-2 at Drogheda. For many, the goal echoed Denis Bergkamp at his best, though this observer couldn’t get Matt Le Tissier out of his mind, as Griffin first flicked to take out one defender, then pirouetted to take out another before finding the net with power and precision, the whole thing accomplished in one apparently seamless movement.
So even the most ardent fans of the gifted Forrester could hardly complain when, earlier this week, the MNS panel awarded Griffin the EA Sports Goal of the Season gong, the 21-year-old happily reliving a moment of magic when he was totally in the zone.
“Eoghan Osborne threw the ball into me and I saw a lad coming behind me and my first instinct was just to chip it over his head,” he recalled.
“It came off beautifully and then I saw the next defender so I spun him and I twisted and I put the ball in the roof of the net. I knew the goalkeeper thought I was going to go to the other side of the net so I was thinking I’d do something different and thank God it went in. It’s definitely the best goal I ever scored.”
Time was when a great League of Ireland goal would have been a cult item, cherished by those who were there to see it scored but, unless the RTÉ cameras happened to be on hand, destined to remain a lost secret to everyone else. Not any more. The weekly around-the-grounds MNS coverage was enough to ensure Griffin’s wonder strike was captured for posterity — but it was the internet which allowed it to go global: according to the player’s club, a YouTube clip of the goal has now been viewed almost 400,000 times. Thus, in the modern age, goals can be, in more ways than one, the great equaliser in football, permitting a local hero like Griffin to become an international one, his strike for a relegation-threatened side in a derby defeat magically elevated to the same plane as great goals scored at a World Cup or in the Champions League.
And, believe it, a great goal is always a great goal regardless of the level at which it’s scored. In 1981, George Best bamboozled half-a-dozen Fort Lauderdale players before finding the back of the net for San Jose Earthquakes in the old NASL. Best might have been nearing the end of his playing career in what, in world football terms, would have been considered a backwater domestic league, yet he always nominated this goal as the best he ever scored, ahead even of all those great ones he’d claimed for Manchester United in the First Division, the FA Cup and the European Cup. And when outraged English critics took issue with him, Best dismissed them by saying it would still have been a great goal even if he’d scored it against a bunch of 11-year-olds. Call it up on YouTube and you’ll see why he had a point.
In truth, the wealth of sublime goals now available at the click of a button can be almost overwhelming, yet it isn’t only for reasons of nostalgia that I’m still wedded to the conviction that the greatest goals of my time were scored, respectively, all of 42 and 26 years ago. The first, the greatest team goal of them all, was Brazil’s fourth, thumped home by Carlos Alberto at the end of a symphonic move, in their 1970 World Cup final triumph over Italy. And the second, the greatest individual goal every scored, was Maradona’s virtuoso solo effort against England for Argentina in the World Cup of 1986.
But then there are also those goals whose significance outweighs their intrinsic merit. And there could hardly be a more timely example than substitute Tom Watt’s strike for Celtic against Barcelona this week. Let’s be honest, it was hardly a thing of beauty. Indeed, it could hardly have been more straightforward: a hail mary punt up field, a run through on goal and a strong angled finish. Yet, whatever else happens in Watt’s career, that goal ensures him immortality at one of the most famous football clubs in the world and, for one night only, meant that an 18-year-old substitute got to outshine Lionel Messi. That’s the difference a goal can make.
