Football’s Greatest Goals No.26
After yesterday’s ‘Iconic Moment’ featured a moment in Euro 96, I thought that I would include a goal from the tournament for this week’s ‘Greatest Goal’.
In my opinion there were four truly great goals in the tournament. Paul Gascoigne’s delightful goal against Scotland, Karel Poborsky and Davor Suker’s lobs for Czech Republic and Croatia and this week’s ‘Greatest Goal’ from Alan Shearer against Holland.
For once, it wasn’t the actual goal itself that made it great, more the build up that lead to Shearer getting the ball. It is easy to choose spectacular goals from long distance, volleys or bicycle kicks, but team goals are often more delightful to watch. That is definitely the case with this goal.
England needed to avoid defeat against a strong Holland side, who had got to the Quarter Finals of the World Cup two years before. They had great players in their side such as Dennis Bergkamp, Clarence Seedorf, Ronald de Boer and Patrick Kluivert.
I don’t need to write a full match report of the game as I already did during my ‘Euro 96 Revisited’ series earlier this summer. You can find the report here.
The only important thing of note is that England were 2-0 up thanks to a first half penalty from Alan Shearer and a Teddy Sheringham header six minutes after the restart.
The goal started with Steve McManaman playing Paul Gascoigne with a neat through ball. Gascoigne ran onto the ball and forced his way through the gap between the right back and centre back.
The England midfielder suddenly had Danny Blind standing in front of him, blocking his route to goal. He did however, have both Teddy Sheringham and Alan Shearer across from him, ten metres apart at the edge of the box. Gascoigne took a couple of touches and drew Blind in towards him before laying the ball back to Sheringham.
Sheringham allowed the ball to roll across in front of him and Dutch defender Johan de Kock came charging towards him to block a potential shot. The England striker feigned to shoot before side-footing the ball across to his right foot towards Shearer with the deftest of touches.
Shearer made no mistake with his shot, rifling the ball high into the top corner of the net, giving Edwin van der Sar in the Holland goal absolutely no chance.
It was a fantastic team goal but the best part about it in my opinion was Sheringham’s casual assist. He knew instinctively where his strike partner was and took de Kock out of the game with an almost arrogant dummy. It completed the move nicely and if Shearer had missed the chance laid to him by Sheringham, it would have been almost criminal!
England went on to win the match 4-1 and reached the semi finals against Germany and we all know how those go for England! The Dutch were knocked out in the Quarter Finals by France on penalties.
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