Tuesday, February 14, 2012

Going Overboard

Allow my to get ornery and foul-mouthed ahead of the Barça kickoff: In response to Ronaldo's latest offensive explosion, Deadspin's Timothy Burke wrote:
You are unlikely to see as perfect a soccer goal as this for a very, very long time. Cristiano Ronaldo, who's hoarding goals at such a clip it's as if he's trying to make every Spanish soccer fan forget the name Messi forever...
(Here's the goal.) This is just fucking stupid. First of all, Messi has been a bit off-form since the Málaga game, but he has more goals than Ronaldo in all major tournaments this year, and more in the Liga excluding penalties. He also has more assists, is more consistently involved in his team's offense, and, as good as CR7 is, he is just transparently better than Ronaldo, as the three consecutive Ballon d'Or awards suggest. Nobody is forgetting Messi, dipshit.

But more to the point, it was a nice strike, for sure, but the most perfect goal you'll see for a long, long time? Please. I don't think it'll wind up in the Liga's top ten this year. Goal quality is, of course, a subjective thing, and personally I prefer a buildup of zig-zagging runs and pinpoint passing, which is both a product and a cause of me being a Barça and Messi fan. Or a fan of Giovani more than Guardado. Burke seems to disagree, and prefers the long-distance strike. Whatever. But it wasn't even that special of a strike. It was surely a nice goal, but Iñigo Martínez has two bombs this season that were far better than Ronaldo's. Vladimir Weiss had a goal that was every bit the equal of Ronaldo's the previous week for Espanyol (about two minutes in). Indeed, it's an odd week when you don't see a strike like Ronaldo's somewhere around the top leagues in Europe.

3 comments:

malcolm said...

the precision of both his move and the strike is fucking amazing. you can quibble all you like over whether Los Zetas are more powerful than the Sinaloa cartel Patrick, but even me, a Ronaldo hater, was blown away by this.

pc said...

I'm not taking anything away from him, it was a great strike. But indisputably better than the Weiss goal? Or a dozen others you could find from this season alone? I don't see it.

malcolm said...

best goal ever :)