Greatest Own Goals of All-Time No.21
There seems to be an ongoing theme throughout this series about own goals. They tend to be scored by players who are either in the wrong place at the wrong time, have an unfortunate bit of bad luck, or make an incredibly bad error of judgement. For this week’s ‘Greatest Own Goal’, the unfortunate defender is guilty of the first two of these three categories.
Lyon’s Fernando Marcal managed to score one of the most comical of own goals in recent seasons on 2nd February last year. It simply had to feature in this series!
Lyon were away to Paris Saint-Germain in the French League and were trailing 2-0 at the break. Within two minutes of the restart, the home fans were on their feet for a third time to cheer another goal and were also in hysterics!
PSG’s German international Julian Draxler had the ball out on the left wing, deep inside his own half. He dribbled forward before laying the ball off to Kylian Mbappe as the first Lyon defender came in to try and win possession. He then carried on running forward, having cut inside Mbappe who had the ball on the touchline.
After outmuscling an opponent, Mbappe was able to bring the forward about 25 yards before slipping the ball into the box for Draxler to chase.
The German got to the ball and managed to flick the ball wide of the onrushing Lyon goalkeeper Anthony Lopez, who had slid in to try and block Draxler’s route to goal.
Draxler’s pass was meant to go to either one of two PSG forwards who were waiting at the edge of the penalty area. Lyon midfielder Thiago Mendes raced in to intercept the pass and sent the ball rolling towards the byline.
Unfortunately for Lyon, Julian Draxler was waiting on the byline after he had carried on running after skipping over Anthony Lopez. The German instinctively played the ball back into the penalty area and in came Fernando Marcal to smash the ball hard into the back of the net!
A covering defender on the line could do nothing to stop Marcal’s mishit clearance due to the sheer ferocity that it came at him. It was a fantastic own goal that all but ended Lyon’s hopes of trying to get back in the game.
PSG went on to win the game 4-2 and Fernando Marcal waited ten months until he could finally appear in the ‘Far Post Header’s Greatest Own Goals of All-Time’!
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