Goals

While we were all busy drinking, eating turkey, napping and arguing over the results of the election with family, AS Roma’s Diego Perotti was living a much more active lifestyle by playing in a Europa League match against Viktoria Plzen on Thursday. 

Roma would win the match 4-1, cementing their place as winner’s of Group E, and Perotti scored a stunner with a rabona chip that found the back of the net. Did he mean it? 

Diego Perotti on his rabona goal vs. Viktoria Plzen:

Chances are, you've never heard the name Tornike Okriashvili.

He's a midfielder from Georgia (the country, not the state) who plays for FC Krasnodar in the Russian first division, and, man, he just scored one of the craziest game winners you'll ever see.

The above bicycle kick came in the fourth minute of extra time against Zenit St. Petersburg.

The goal was all the more insane because Krasnodar were 1-0 down after Zenit scored in the 86th minute, and they came back to win 2-1.

Darren Bent will go down in history for one thing: donking a football off a beach ball past Pepe Reina into the goal while he was at Sunderland in 2009.

This is one of the silliest, dumbest goals of all time. It shouldn't have counted, but it did. Even though I am a Liverpool fan, and this goal was scored against my club, I'm glad this goal exists somewhere on the plane of space-time. It serves as a reminder that sports can be both profoundly moving and profoundly stupid, sometimes at the same time.

In Istanbul, the most dangerous lead you can hold is 3-0. Just ask AC Milan. 16 years after the original Miracle in Istanbul in the Champions League final, Besiktas mounted their own furious three-goal comeback against Benfica at the Vodafone Arena in the same city.

Goncalo Guedes, Nelsinho and Ljubomir Fejsa put the visitors up 3-0 by the 31st minute, and Besiktas still hadn’t managed to get on the scoresheet by the start of the second half. However, a phenomenal scissor volley from Cenk Tosun, like Steven Gerrard before him, triggered the heartfelt comeback.

17-year-old Benfica youth Gedson Fernandes scored a sublime goal against Besiktas in the UEFA Youth League by cracking a volley from behind the halfway line. The elements of surprise and placement usually dictate the success of a goal from midfield, but the Portugal U-17 prospect went with sheer force in this attempt.