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I know, you’re bored. I am too. We all are.
Still, let’s not sit around moping. Get productive. I have. With everyone turning to Netflix and the like in these times of football-content desperation, I’ve ranked the best goals ever scored in films featuring the beautiful game.
From the sublime to the Statham, here are the top 10 for the category the Oscars has (so far) controversially failed to honour…
10. Mean Machine
Escape to Victory for the Wetherspoons generation, Mean Machine (2001) remains an enduring favourite, despite being a bit rubbish. Endearing rubbish, mind.
The match between crims and guards culminates with Jason Statham (more on him later) saving a free kick which is launched downfield to Vinnie Jones, who sends his marker to the shops with a neat flick before rounding the keeper…just.
Jones, with all the time in the world, then squares it back for team crappo Danny Dyer to blast home into an empty net, thus reforming the criminal justice system in one kick.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 1/10
I’ll level with you. I haven’t seen She’s the Man, which is apparently a 2006 sports-romance film starring Amanda Bynes.
Penalties are the easiest bit of football to replicate in cinema. You’ve got obvious tension, limited movement, and less burden on the actors to demonstrate actual technical competence.
The reason Bynes’ penno rises above your average fare (looking at you Sean Bean) is that:
1.) She is apparently playing against fully grown men despite being a teenage girl…?
2.) She subverts the genre by missing the spot-kick only to scissor the rebound top bins.
Much like Carles Puyol, she refuses to tie her hair up while playing. Admirable.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 2/10
Great talent Jimmy Grimble.
Sadly, he broke through the youth ranks at City just as they were taken over by Abu Dhabi and big-money signings like Robinho and David Silva blocked his path to first-team minutes.
After 11 loans in seven seasons, he finally left permanently for the Evo Stik Northern Premier where he is enjoying something of a renaissance – interview coming soon to The Athletic.
This match-winner off the twat kid’s face in the Manchester Schools Cup final is still a career highlight for the once-highly rated youngster.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 3/10
Santiago Muñez’s last-minute free-kick against Liverpool to secure Newcastle a return to the Champions League is oft held up as a high watermark of football on film.
However, did you know the young Mexican-American scored an even better strike?
In Goal II: Living the Dream, Muñez has ditched Tyneside for Madrid (because of course he has) and is enjoying life at the top. Here he bangs in a volley against Olympiacos on his Champions League debut.
The great trick of Muñez’s technique (and indeed Kuno Becker’s acting) is to make it look like he’s never encountered a football before in his life, approaching it with the all the conviction of a man nudging a dead squirrel off his drive, before somehow slamming in unorthodox worldie after worldie.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 5/10
“…one on one with Bastardo”
A perfectly realised bit of cinematic wish fulfilment from 2001’s Mike Bassett: England Manager which has its mercurial alcoholic playmaker Kevin Tonkinson recreate both of Diego Maradona’s infamous goals against England in one.
It’s a lovely run from the big man and a great comic scene…but for me Clive, the ref’s got to be doing better there.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 6/10
5. Bend it Like Beckham
Yes ok, Jess’ free-kick is the film’s denouement but Keira Knightley’s equaliser moments earlier in the game (04:06) is the superior goal.
She slaloms around the entire defence and the keeper ffs.
The antithesis of every bit of dodgy technique in films featuring the beautiful game.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 7/10
A classic of the genre, but just missing out on a podium finish is Pele’s – sorry, Corporal Luis Fernandez’s – bicycle kick against the Nazis in 1981’s Escape to Victory.
It’s great technique from the viagra promoting, hair-into-diamond-making Brazilian, no doubt, but the match did finish as a draw, taking some of the shine off.
Also, it’s not the best overhead kick on the list…
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 8/10
Edging into the top three is this beauty from 2006’s Razzie nominee The Pink Panther.
You’d expect that a kiss between Jason Statham and Beyonce is a worthy scene-stealing moment…that is until France’s star man ‘Jacquard’ pops up to score a double-footed-backflip-overhead kick that would make Zlatan Ibrahimovic wince to beat China in extra time (why they needed extra time to see off China, I don’t know. What on earth the keeper is doing, I also don’t know).
The Stath is killed by poison dart moments later, but the goal lives on.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 9/10
Little backstory here for those that have never seen Stephen Chow’s 2001 masterpiece Shaolin Soccer; A group of monks reunite over their master’s death to play football and promote martial arts(?) with the film culminating in the big game against Team Evil (not Man City, no).
There’s little else I can say to set up the clip, which shows a TE striker bearing down on shaven-headed emergency keeper Mui’s goal…before perhaps the most ferocious counter-attack you are ever likely to see.
You can talk about your xG and transitional play all you want, but have you ever seen a shot literally strip a keeper naked?
The only reason this isn’t number one is that I’m fairly sure the goal frame was blown off the pitch before the ball crossed the line. Another great strike that would’ve been lost to VAR…
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 10/10
I know what you’re thinking, it’s only a penalty.
But…it’s a headed penalty. Blasted into the top corner. Past an obnoxious sh*thouse of a goalkeeper with frosted tips. By a Golden Retriever.
In the words of Martin Tyler, I swear you’ve never seen anything like this.
Give that dog the Puskas Award, Academy Award and Crufts (Cruyff-ts?) Best in Show. What a good boy.
If Messi Had Done That Rating: 11/10
