It is time to chose the best goal from our Isuzu UTE A-League and Liberty A-League seasons. But how do you choose? It depends on your taste, but, as Tom Smithies discovered, there are very different interpretations of the perfect goal. Note: This piece was originally published in response to Ben Garuccio’s scorpion goal earlier this season.
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You can see by the look of Ben Garuccio’s face that it’s a moment well out of the ordinary – a mix of delight and bewilderment, that asks: ‘What did I just do?’
Garuccio’s goal for Western United in February instantly went viral, thanks to promotion from Fifa.com among other sources, and may yet make it into the reckoning for the Puskas Award that is given to the scorer of the world’s “best” goal each year. To the surprise of absolutely no-one, it won the Isuzu UTE A-League goal of the week competition, and was named goal of the month.
With both feet off the ground and his body horizontal, it was a “scorpion kick” to make jaws drop, and of course prompted instant comparisons with Riley McGree’s own take in 2018 on the contortion required to execute a scorpion so devastatingly well.
McGree was on the 10-strong short-list for the Puskas Award that year, but didn’t even make the top three – perhaps not surprising given that it was until that point an award decided by a fan poll. In fact FIFA changed the rules after Mo Salah’s controversial triumph saw off bicycle kicks from both Gareth Bale and Cristiano Ronaldo, but it did spark an almighty debate over how you can capture the “perfect goal” in any given year.
Or indeed in any given week. The A-League’s goal of the week is chosen by an expert panel, but even selecting four for the shortlist was tough this week after at least six noteworthy goals. Popular sentiment via a fan poll went with Marcos Rojas; the experts preferred Mathew Leckie, and the debate has raged.
The list of the A-League’s goals of the year over the last 16 years shows a distinct bias towards freak over finesse – whether it’s McGree’s scorpion, Nikolai Topor-Stanley’s thunderbolt from 35m or Orlando Engelaar’s audacious lob from his own half. Goals made of team play, or even spectacular dribbling, are very much in the minority.
Which is interesting because the latter – the team goals especially – are the ones most teams spend all week practising, but it’s the off-the-cuff moments that people congregate around to celebrate. In fact, not even the scorers of the A-League’s greatest goals can agree on what makes one perfect. “A tap in is an art form,” declares Roy O’Donovan (Goal of the Year 2015-16) with the certainty of a striker finally getting to extoll the virtues of a lifetime spent hiding in the six-yard box – even though his goal of the year was a chest-control-and-volley from outside the penalty area for the Mariners.
Marcos Flores (Goal of the Year 2012-13), on the other hand, gets misty-eyed discussing the different ways an individual can bring a game to life. “It’s really subjective,” he insists. “For some soccer lovers we will love the game of Maradona dribbling past 10 people, and then you go into a goal like Zlatan Ibrahimovic (for Ajax) with five men around him and a lot of touches coming in and out, and then you go to a Roberto Carlos freekick, which is an unbelievably long range (hit).”
Not everyone can do that of course, which is O’Donovan’s point; there is genius in a great striker appearing out of nowhere to finish off a move of ingenuity constructed by his teammates.
“Sometimes it’s stuff you work on all week with a coach – how to break down a team, the opposition, how to get the ball wide and play,” he says. “Then as a striker, just being selfish and staying out of the way – and when it comes to fruition and you get on the end of that ball in the six yard box for a tap-in and you win 1-0, there’s honestly nothing sweeter.
“The majority of supporters will say, Oh, he’s a tap-in merchant or whatever. But there’s about five or six different movements going into getting on the end of that tap-in.”
Many fans might respectfully disagree, especially when someone like Flores got on the ball and threatened to do something literally breathtaking. His A-League goal of the year was scored for Melbourne Victory against Wellington, a brilliantly improvised piece of one-touch passing with Gui Finkler before an out-side-of-the-boot finish – but it’s not even Flores’s own favourite, coming for him behind the dribble and lofted finish he scored for Adelaide in 2010. But Flores’s deconstruction of his Victory strike reveals a brilliant contrast between the goal a coach wants his team to score versus what happens when players improvise.
“Personally, I like the goal when I played for Adelaide United, it was with my left foot and I don’t have a left foot – never had it! I just closed my eyes and the ball went in,” Flores grins.
“With Melbourne Victory I (scored) with my outside foot and in that scenario I was always criticized by the coach Ange Postecoglou for using my outside (of the) foot, at training he never let me use that.
“And I was not able to connect with Finkler so often because of the tactics – we were two No 10s, one on one side of the field and the other one on the left side so we couldn’t connect as much.
“Ange used to be really pragmatic in terms of how he organized a team and everyone got rules where to pass the ball, how to pass the ball. (There was) the ABC of Marcos Flores, the ABC of Gui Finkler, the ABC of everybody. So in my role the A was Marco Rojas, the B was Mark Milligan, the C was the right back. My ‘impossible pass’ was Gui Finkler.
“But that goal against Wellington came after a clearance where we won the second ball, not by creating from the template. So Gui was coming out of the box, we recovered the ball so he stayed as the number nine for that second. So that is why when I cut in and I wanted to release the ball, he was the No 9. And then when I pass the ball to him, he bounced it back, I passed the ball to him again and he bounced it back.
“That goal was the universe of football that let things happen. That was the product of two players connecting without talking, the chemistry between him and me was amazing. And the end product was a goal that I liked but I didn’t know that was going to be the best goal of the year.”
Sometimes, though, players have an inkling they’ve done something really special. Tarek Elrich won goal of the year in 2014-15 for a slalom run from leftback for Adelaide, into the Melbourne City penalty area and finishing with remarkable aplomb.
Just don’t suggest it was something of a freak, because Elrich has the proof and the context to show it was something plotted on the training ground.
“That wasn’t my most important goal, but it was the one I enjoyed the most,” Elrich says. “My first ever goal was in a semifinal (in 2007) against Brisbane – it was the winner, so it was pretty special.
“But in my time at Adelaide I had two years under Josep Gombau and they brought out the inner me. He used to really encourage the fullbacks to dribble the ball where in the past, I’ve had coaches tell me to keep it simple, keep it one touch, keep it two touch and just overlap.
“So he gave me plenty of confidence, telling me to dribble with the ball and make my winger work hard going back rather than attacking me. It’s something that I worked on and I actually set up two other goals where I dribbled from my own half and set the forward up (against the Mariners in 2013-14 and against Brisbane a year later).
“It was something we definitely worked on. Josep liked the fullbacks and center backs to actually dribble into midfield and see what pans out in front of them and just express themselves.”
Elrich’s goal sparked bedlam, in part because it put his side 3-0 up, and that’s the other part of how context can help to frame a goal – if it comes in a losing cause, does it still have the same lustre as a game-changing moment?
O’Donovan’s goal of the year came with the Mariners already 4-1 down, and he might as well have just missed a bus for all the excitement visible on his face.
“When you’re in player mode that very much matters,” he says. “You often hear – and it’s a bit mundane and bland – after a game, (a player say) it doesn’t matter about myself, it’s about the team winning the game and getting the three points.
“At that very moment in time you are so frustrated with losing that when that goal goes in, OK it’s great but it’s like it’s worth nothing really. You can enjoy it now a few years down the line and I got an award for it, which was great. But context is everything and you just see what a sweet moment it was for Western United when Garuccio scored.
“Not only they couldn’t believe the goal but it put them on top of the league. That brought the unity together, the whole celebration had a lot of components in it.
“For headlines and for hype and for everything that goes with it, you knew that Garuccio was going to be living it for weeks.”
