5 ms·

Can someone explain to a soccer novice why this goal is special? It looks similar to lots of others to my untrained eye.

• rusk 6y ago
  What do you not get? He takes the ball from the half way line on a solo run past 6 of some of the best players in the world and manages to score, while being tackled. I’m not a sports aficionado so struggle to come up with analogy to another sport but let’s just say it’s like reverse engineering an nvidia driver in a few weeks using nothing but vi and hexdump. This was lauded as goal of the century.
  • herodoturtle 6y ago
    Yeah man well said. This goal was the 0x5f3759df of soccer.
  • racl101 6y ago
    Using nothing but nano.
• rahoulb 6y ago
  Very few people can control the ball whilst turning as he does at the beginning. And he beats six players, some of the best in the world. As you get to higher and higher levels of football the quality of the defending increases so being able to play against the opposition as if you were eight is very rare.
• jgwil2 6y ago
  It's a very good goal because of how many defenders he evades all on his own, but it's considered the "goal of the century" because of the context: a World Cup elimination game against the hated English.
• bulutsuzku 6y ago
  It's not just fast running and controlling the ball like a master. It was World Soccer Cup semi-finals and against England, which invented the sport.
• solids 6y ago
  Similar to playstation goals you mean?
• emilsedgh 6y ago
  So the importance of this goal was that Maradona dribbled pas almost the whole England team single highhandedly and humiliated them, restoring the pride of a nation (Argentina) who lost a war (Falklands War) before this to England.
  • pyman 6y ago
    Argentina did not loose the war, that's what Brits don't understand, a facist dictator lost the war. You see, in 1982 my family and the entire country was at war with an Argentinean dictator, when suddenly Margaret Tatcher, an unpopular Prime Minister at that time, saw the opportunity and instead of de-escalating the tension between UK and the dictator, she decided to go to war with him. What the media didn't tell the Brits is that Argentina was already at war and fighting for democracy. For that reason, Argentine people felt betrayed by England. Both countries were close friends for more than 100 years, since 1810 when Britain and Argentina signed a treaty of friendship proposed by Woodbine Parish. His cousin, John P. Robertson, was a good friend of General San Martin. Argentina and England had 2 enemies in common: Spain and France. Both countries were allies until the beginning of world war 2, when General Perón became a good friend of Mussolini. The dictators and facists Videla a Galtieri went to war with the UK, US and NATO. There was no democracy in Argentina, no government and diplomats to stop the war. It was an illegal war because it was not approved by the Congress and Senate. The fact that Maradona scored an "illegal" goal against the Brits was seen as a revenge for loosing a war that no one wanted to fight, except for Tatcher.
    • dboreham 6y ago
      I was alive at the time, in the UK (not England). Everyone knew the war was not with the Argentinian people. Also Maradona became a hero in our house for defeating England[1]. [1]See https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braveheart https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Braveheart for background.
    • msla 6y ago
      > The fact that Maradona scored an "illegal" goal against the Brits was seen as a revenge for loosing a war that no one wanted to fight, except for Tatcher. I'm pretty sure Leopoldo Galtieri wanted the war more than Thatcher did; he started it, after all. Also, negotiating with dictators doesn't always end well. Look at what happened in 1939.
• patrickk 6y ago
  If you ran for a few meters and tried to control a ball at your feet, you'd understand somewhat. Even that is extremely difficult to do well- shifting the ball and keeping it under control of your feet and away from defenders. Now try to imagine people trying to hack you down (totally normal defending back then) and tugging your shirt, in the blazing heat, at altitude, against a team that humiliated your country in a war a few years earlier...and instead you waltz around all of them, make them look amateurish, and knock them out of the biggest sports tournament on the planet at a sport they invented.
  • oblio 6y ago
    And to add to that, those defenders were probably all (much) taller and heavier than Maradona.
  • gerdesj 6y ago
    Nicely put me old fruit. Sadly we have managed to make a habit of that. For example the "death of English cricket" - https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/23241494 https://www.bbc.co.uk/newsround/23241494 is why the Ashes exist. Soccer is not grid iron, nor is it rugby but back in the day, defence could be quite a bit more robust than it is now. Footie players are not built like the second row and if you happen to apply six studs (cleats I think for the left pondians) at speed to the side of someone's knee then it will not end well. If you look carefully, you will notice that Maradona doesn't simply whizz around defenders: he completely humiliates our boys by finding space and making the ball go there with him. The bloody thing is attached to his toe when he needs it to be so and then he simply flicks it into the net, almost as an afterthought. He barely looks at it - he know where it is because he has told it to be there. Genius.
  • herodoturtle 6y ago
    Nailed it. Good writing mate.
  • racl101 6y ago
    You do paint a picture.
• anonymousDan 6y ago
  The other thing to remember was that according to Gary Lineker the pitch was absolutely terrible.
• deleted 6y ago
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