Hopefully you know the drill by now, but just in case you’re new/forgetful: this isn’t necessarily the three best goals of the week. These are, we reckon, possibly the three most interesting goals of the week. Or at least, they’re the three goals we thought we could make jokes about. A longer explanation here if you’re bothered; otherwise, enjoy!
Ryan Mason wins Alternative EPL Goal of the Week
It wasn’t a vintage Premier League weekend, but we still found three goals that moved us in mysterious ways.
Mark Runnacles/Getty Images
Kelechi Iheanacho, Manchester City vs. Crystal Palace
Credit: user cveiz on r/soccer
The intersection of modern life with modern football is an astoundingly noisy and frequently unpleasant place, a constant cacophony of money crashing into hype crashing into anger. Yet despite this, there are some things that remain untouched. There are things that remain purely and fundamentally good regardless of everything that surrounds them.
For example, you might think that Premier League in a cynical exercise in separating English football from its core congregation and repacking it as a globalised machine for the printing of money, and you might think that Manchester City's sudden rise to the top of the league is nothing more than an equally cynical exercise in soft political power by the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. You might think that their last-minute win over Crystal Palace simply confirmed that, once again, this is going to be a season spent watching one dominant club trot off into the sunset. And you might think that any young player unlucky enough to be stuck at City is going to find their chances limited, their prospects diminished, and their development damagingly stalled.
You might think all that, and you might even have a point, but still. There is nothing in football quite like the joy of watching a young kid step onto a football field and score a goal in one of his first couple appearances. Everything else fades away, just for a second, and we get to see a dream become a reality. That was a true one hundred years ago as it was on Saturday afternoon, when Kelechi Iheanacho did his thing.
Credit: user penguin672232 on r/soccer
Is there such a thing as a protest goal? If there is, then this was one. Though we should probably start by saying that it was also a very, very good goal, a leaping scissor volley of admirable technique and precision from a forward too often typecast as a big lump. It was also quite a funny one, in that the sight of Benteke jumping into the air caused Ander Herrera to squeal "Not the face!" and bury his head in his arms. You can judge him if you like, but if we looked that handsome, we wouldn't be taking any chances.
Apart from this moment of brilliance, however, Benteke had a quiet game. This is not a criticism of him; this is a criticism of the other ten Liverpool players whose job, simplistically put, is to make sure Benteke receives the ball in dangerous positions, then support him in that end. This, they failed to do. This, they failed to do miserably. Blame the tactics, blame the personnel, blame the owners; blame whoever you like. The point is, come the 83rd minute, Benteke had spent more than an hour shuffling around up front, showing for the ball, making little runs and losing his marker, only to watch his colleagues either lose the ball or hump it long.
That sort of thing wears a person down. It gets to them. Occasionally, it can even give them strength. Some flying volleys are shouts of delight, the joyous expression of an athlete escaping, just for a second, the ever-present confines of gravity. This one was different. It was grumpy. It had a face on. Look what I can do, you useless shower of bastards. If only you could sort yourselves out and pass me the ball properly.
Credit: user camaradona on r/soccer
That football is frequently very boring is, by now, a commonplace that need not detain us any longer. That Tottenham are among the Premier League's worst offenders on this score is, however, a fairly new development, and not necessarily a welcome one. By some distance the most miserable game of last season was Spurs' nil-all away at Burnley, a game so bad that the famous Tottenham cockerel hopped down off his ball, pulled out all his feathers, stuck a lemon up himself and clambered into a preheated oven.
Saturday brought us the sequel. For 82 long, long minutes the team of Cliff Jones, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Glenn Hoddle laboured to create anything against arguably the Premier League's worst side. Harry Kane continued in his deep, deep funk, Son Heung-min had a debut so quiet it was whispered, and they could even have been losing, had Jermain Defoe not forgotten that the only reason he exists is to break into space behind the defence and then kick the ball into the net. When the most exciting attacker on the field is a lost Younes Kaboul wandering about on the wing, you know something's deeply broken in your afternoon.
And then up popped Ryan Mason, who began and ended a slick interchange of passes that seemed to have fallen into the game from a different, better place. It wasn’t just a rare moment of quality; it was as though they’d suddenly started playing a different sport. t would have been no surprise had the referee disallowed the goal on the basis that something had to have gone wrong somewhere.
Mason, for his trouble, took the flying boot of Costel Pantilimon to his thigh and celebrated his fine goal by lying on the ground in agony, then being taken away for treatment. Which neatly rounds out the game's bleak, existential tragedy: nothing happened, aggressively, and then something did and it ended in pain. Off he went on a stretcher, the aching avatar of the human condition.
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