Premier League Goal of the Week: All hail Samir Nasri

Nine matches, twenty-three more goals, and another Premier League weekend in the bag. Here, once again, is the SB Nation Alternative Goal of the Week, so-called because while other lists merely consider which goals are best, we look at the whole picture. Was it funny? Was it tragic? Was it appalling on a grandiose level?

For a fuller explanation of the criteria, see week one. Otherwise, read on!

I’d come on as a sub, it was early in the season, away at Leicester, nil-nil, a tight game, and I lost my marker at the far post, followed the cross, got my head down ... perhaps the specifics were off -- nobody dreams about Leicester -- but that, more or less, is what happened to Dele Alli this weekend. A dream became a reality. But such dreams are never just about the specifics of the goal, of course; there’s more to a goal than heading a ball, and dreams flourish and expand, acquire on colour and shape and character. How, you wonder, did Dele Alli imagine he might celebrate his first goal for his shiny new big club?

Maybe he had something elaborate and choreographed in mind. A message hidden under the shirt, perhaps, or a mask hidden in a sock. Or maybe he’d planned nothing at all, and intended just to ride the swelling wave of spontaneous joy wherever it might take him. What he probably hadn’t imagined was that he would spend those first few seconds as a future Sporcle answer lying prostrate on the ground inside the goal, unable to move, pinned beneath Kasper Schmeichel’s 6 foot and 3.

He got out eventually, of course, and ran over to the corner flag. He got in a knee slide, and did a bit of shouting. He may even have enjoyed himself. But we established last week that goalkeepers are dreamwreckers and here was another example of their malignancy. A young man, in the throes of bringing idle fancy to actual life, robbed of the moment-after-the-moment by an angry and sprawling Dane. Poor lad. Here’s hoping that his next goal affords him the freedom to do as he pleases. For who out there hasn’t lost an afternoon dreaming of the celebration that would follow their second goal for Spurs.

I ran. I didn’t think; I didn’t have time to think. I ran. Through dark streets, over wet cobbles, down dark alleyways, across the river. Though the street lamps were burning the fog was so thick that it seemed, at times, as though I was fleeing through a dark raincloud. It was well past midnight, and the streets empty. I shouted for help regardless; nobody came. I shouted warnings; I do not think anybody heard.

Eventually, I stopped. Nobody can run for ever; my lungs were burning and my legs were screaming. I was down by the docks. The fog lay heavy here too, mingling with the smells of salt and fish. No breeze came from the sea. I listened, but heard only the muffled clanks and creaks of the boats, and the dull slap of the sea against the harbour wall. I held myself close against a wall, hidden in the shadows. Had I lost it? Had it gone?

Then I heard something above me. A clatter, and a roof tile came free and skittered down, before crashing to the ground before me. Then came the click-and-clack that had followed me all summer, tha had driven me here, across the country, to the coast, that had sent me sprinting through a town I did not know down to an ocean I could not see. That had hunted me, herded me to the edge of the continent. I asked my legs to run again. They could not.

In those last seconds, there came a breeze. The fog tore apart and the night stars came out and the moon shone down and I saw it. I saw The Narrative, and I could not scream. It was hanging over the guttering above me, an explosion of yellow tooth and black beak and blood-red feather and livid green scale, its blind eyes wide and white. I stood, helpless and frozen, as it unrolled a dark, dripping tentacle out and down. It closed around my neck, sticky, taut, almost tender. I felt its pulse against my skin. I felt hot breath steaming through the night air. And then? Then I felt nothing at all.

From the horror to the joy, and what a lovely little goal this was. Almost unnecessarily beautiful: Everton, though they’d been plenty awkward, were more or less beaten, and if City had really wanted to cap things off, surely a scuffed cross-shot or a header from a corner would have sufficed. Instead, they’ve gone and wasted something beautiful on the end of a game.

No, it wasn’t in the Premier League, and no, it doesn’t count. But come on. Look at the thing.