Amazing Goals

Seven years ago, the wildest sequence of events took place at Vicarage Road during the Championship playoff semifinal between Watford and Leicester City. Troy Deeney’s goal vs. Leicester is fondly remembered years later as one of the best last-second winners.

At the time, Watford had been out of the Premier League for six years, and this was the first time in five years that the Hornets had finished in the top six of the Championship and even qualified for the playoffs.

The term “breaking ankles” is when you juke your opponent so bad, they end up on their backside. It’s an act seen lots of times in basketball and sometimes in soccer. It makes supporters and the bench go wild and adds an element of excitement to the game. Conceding a goal or basket is one thing, but losing your own ankles is on another echelon of humiliation. The Lionel Messi goal vs Bayern Munich in 2015 features one of the worst ankle breakers in soccer history. How does it compare to the time Allen Iverson snatched a pair of his own ankles?

On May 3, 1998, legendary goalkeeper Edwin van der Sar scored the first and only goal of his professional career. In recognition of those in net, this list of the five best goalkeeper goals has been made to celebrate goals scored from the most unlikely source. Before starting the list, let’s take a moment to appreciate a young Van der Sar scoring.

Now on to the good stuff.

When the 2006 World Cup was over, eight of The Guardian’s 12 correspondents in Germany named it the match of the tournament. That sentiment has lasted 14 years as a recent poll on FIFA’s Twitter — with nearly 45K votes cast — declared it the one game from the 2006 competition that fans wanted to rewatch most. 

And all this fervent nostalgia for a match that remained 0-0 over the course of the first 118 minutes of action in Dortmund.

The life of a defender can be a brutal one. Your strikers and midfielders score the glorious goals and get the attention while your goalkeeper makes the amazing saves. Unless your name is Virgil van Dijk, the majority of the players in the back line don’t typically bask in too much glory. In honor of those in defense, here is a list of the 10 best goals by defenders.

10 Best Goals By Defenders

10. Pique Turn vs. Inter Milan

Enough time spent scouring YouTube and the internet for best goal compilations will make an individual believe they've seen it all.