The Greatest Goal of the Decade

How one pass and one header killed a dynasty

I’m sending this out a little early since tomorrow is Christmas Eve. Happy holidays, all. Also, if you need a last-second gift for the special soccer fan in your life, then may I suggest clicking below? Thanks, as always, for reading.

I really like this one:

Luis Suarez is still the best Liverpool player I’ve ever seen -- able to, at the same time, look like his shoes were tied together and as if he were in full control. He straddled the line between self-inflicted calamity and self-inspired creative genius in a way that was perfectly representative of the Liverpool team he joined in January of 2011. For most soccer-watchers, the Kenny Daglish era produced a couple of wildly unmemorable teams; to me, they were a hilarious mismash of not-quite-good-enough players designed to play a supposedly-analytical cross-heavy style despite the presence of arguably the most devastating on-the-ground attacker the league has ever seen. They also were, well, kinda good! In Suarez’s first full year with the team, only Manchester City -- the AGUEROOOOOOO Manchester City -- had a better shot-on-target differential than Liverpool. Of course, they somehow found a way to finish eighth, out went King Kenny, and in came Brendan Rodgers.

Still not my favorite, though. And neither is this -- although it’s close:

Kaka, Cristiano Ronaldo, Mesut Ozil, and Karim Benzema all started this game -- and both Gonzalo Higuain and Angel Di Maria (and Hamit Altintop????) came off the bench. Jose Mourinho’s devolution into caricature and his team’s attempts to essentially destroy the sport of soccer as we know it in an effort to overcome the utter dominance of the Barcelona’s teams he was matched up against  -- that all obscures how fun his Madrid teams were to watch. Remember when Ronaldo and Ozil could move like that? Remember ... Kaka?

I once heard someone -- I forget who; sorry if it was you -- describe Mourinho as both an underrated attacking manager and an overrated defensive one. This Madrid team were proof of that. They set a La Liga record for points in a season (100) and scored ... [takes off glasses] ... [squints in disbelief] ...  [rents the Hubble telescope] ... [has laptop shipped to the face of the moon] ... [looks into telescope] ... holy shit! THEY SCORED 121 GOALS IN A SINGLE 38-GAME LA LIGA SEASON. Three players scored 20; Ronaldo scored 46. Three, including Ronaldo, had at least 12 assists; a 22-year-old Ozil put up 18 helpers. This goal is the epitome of that season; they had the athleticism to just straight-up out-run anyone, but they were also -- almost always -- thinking three steps ahead.

However, neither goal can stand up to this:

I remember where I was when this happened -- sitting in a windowless church-rectory-turned-office in downtown Santa Barbara, working for the sadly and infuriatingly now-defunct magazine Pacific Standard. Spain had won the last three international tournaments with an air of inevitability that shattered all historical norms. They won the 2008 European Championship -- something Spain had never done before. They won the 2010 World Cup despite being in a European team outside of Europe and despite losing the first game of the tournament -- two things that had never been done before. They won the 2012 European Championship -- despite playing without a recognized striker.

Even more so than Barcelona, the Spanish national team seemed to typify the concept of tiki taka, the possession based style that was predicated on always having the ball and always moving the ball. They didn’t have Lionel Messi, so they’d typically shove another midfielder into the starting lineup. It was a kind of attritional aesthetic -- both mesmerizing in the teamwide coordination and flawless technical skill, and totally draining for the opposition and (some) viewers alike. The point of soccer is to score goals and keep your opponents from doing the same. The point of Spain’s possession play was itself -- to keep the ball. All that other stuff? That was just a byproduct of a near-fanatical devotion to passing and moving.

The style had shown some cracks before the tournament in Brazil. Barcelona were vaporized by Bayern Munich in the 2013 Champions League, and then beaten down by Atletico Madrid the following season -- both in Europe and at home. But the club-level trends had yet to catch up with the international game. In World Cup qualifying, Vicente Del Bosque’s side never trailed in any match. They hadn’t lost -- let alone conceded a goal -- in a knockout-round game since the 2006 World Cup. On the eve of the 2014 tournament, Xavi, the patron saint of possession, said, "We've had this philosophy now for a number of years and I think it would be a mistake to change it. We know that we're going to win or to die with this style of play.”

It’s fitting, then, that the death blow came from a 45-yard diagonal ball and a diving header. Spain had redefined the sport by keeping the ball on the ground, and what killed them was an attacking move that kept the ball off the grass until after the ball his the back of the net. While Spain’s style was at least partially built on the premise that their way of playing was the artful way -- the right way -- Robin Van Persie’s goal had its own kind of physical beauty. Daley Blind’s ball might be the prettiest pass I’ve ever seen -- a kind of sliced, driven, lob that suddenly sat in the air at the last moment, which allowed a diving RVP to catch up with it. The best passes leave the recipient with no choice; van Persie had to head it -- it was the only way he’d make contact with the ball and give Blind the place in history that he deserves -- and the sudden loop he put on the ball meant that Iker Casillas’s didn’t even try to save it. His only motion was to turn and look at the ball bouncing back behind the goal line.

Spain kept 68-percent possession against the Dutch, but they went on to lose the match, 5-1. Spain never lost, and then they were completely annihilated. They lost their next match against Chile, too, and thus were eliminated before the knockout round. Since then, they’ve lost every knockout match they’ve played. They were up 1-0 before Van Persie scored; they’ve still never really recovered from that moment.

Meanwhile, the sport itself seemed to enter a new era as soon as RVP’s header crossed the line. The following year, Barcelona won the Champions League and every other trophy they possibly could, but they did so with what was, at times, a shockingly direct approach that even in its wildest success seemed to irk club supporters who still felt that their team should still play a certain way. Barcelona continued to win La Ligas afterward, but they have increasingly done so thanks to a deep dependence on Messi, rather than the solidity of their system. Real Madrid kept winning Champions League trophies, but more due to their ability to dominate single, decisive moments, rather than control the full course of a match. And while these feted Barcelona and Spain teams won games by essentially eliminating transitional moments -- if you always have the ball, there’s no switch between attack and defense -- the premier teams of the current era -- Liverpool, Manchester City -- have dominated by controlling, creating, and exploiting the times when the ball is up for grabs. 

How much have things changed since the Flying Dutchman? Well, Liverpool won the most recent Champions League despite registering just 39 percent of possession in the final. This year, they’ve got a 10-point lead atop the Premier League, and they got there, in part, by leading the league in long passes played per game.