If you have not heard yet, Wayne Rooney, football star & bad boy for England and Manchester United, scored a ridiculously sublime bicycle kick goal against Manchester City in this year’s Manchester Derby. Some are calling it the best goal ever.
The bicycle kick is notoriously an incredibly hard shot to convert – as Wayne said himself, “nine times out of ten the ball can go anywhere.” As the Wall Street Journal wrote, “When done properly, as in Mr. Rooney’s case, it’s a feat of precision, coordination, athleticism and power.”
It came at an incredible time – he scored with approximately 13 minutes to play in a tied and pressure packed very important league match.
It came amongst incredible players – the combined payrolls alone for City and United total $350 million. Both teams have bought and imported the best of the best from across the world and they were all playing in the match.
I’ll let Steven Rushin from Sports Illustrated explain it for you:
I watched Kirk Gibson’s limp-off home run to win Game 1 of that year’s World Series. Like Jack Buck, I literally could not believe what I had just seen. Lacking any other witnesses to confirm it, I lay in a torpor in front of the tube, wondering if the pictures were real.
I can’t recall a single other instance of being alone, not-quite believing what I’d just seen on TV, until this past Saturday morning, when my wife and four children unaccountably left me alone in the house for the first time in six years.
I really wished I watched the goal live because as an aside, I remember watching Kirk Gibson’s home run as it happened and it was as unbelievable as Mr. Rushin stated and that goal came about 25 years ago. I believe I was listening to the game in my bed on radio and then ran down stairs to catch the immediate reply, my mom yelling at me because she thought I was asleep.
After watching the video below, you’ll see why everyone is making such a fuss.