Ginnnnolllaaaaaa!
It’s 1996, and David Ginola has made everyone’s head fall off…
Words:
Owen BlackhurstImages:
Welcome to MUNDIAL’s Goal of the Month. The rules are pretty simple. Every four weeks, Owen Blackhurst will be delving into the memory banks and picking his favourite goal scored during that month at any point in footballing history. He can pick from any league, from MLS to the Combined Counties. Any player, from Lionel Messi to himself—God, he’s definitely going to do this at some point—and from any year. Got it? Good. Enjoy October’s edition.
David Ginola’s BBC Goal of the Month for October 1996 should have a statue erected in its honour as big as the Angel of the North or be carved from chalk and visible from high in the stratosphere like the Kilburn White Horse. Until the last few years, when clips of every goal ever recorded have been found and released, I had talked about this goal to anyone I could like it was a footballing equivalent of Ecce Homo, the lost Caravaggio painting that recently sent the art world into a tizzy. It’s not lost on me that the mythical thorn-crowned figure in the painting has a touch of the Ginola about him, only he’s not nearly half as handsome, and I bet he couldn’t perform miracles with his left peg.
Ginola had already appeared on the BBC’s shortlist for his swivel, turn, and right-footed screamer that made Gary Neville look like he’d won a competition to play in the game. This goal, though, the last of the ten for that month, the one against Ferencvaros in the UEFA Cup that turned a ball dripping with water into a delicious wine that sated 50,000 screaming Geordies with one big collective gulp, is as good as football gets. It’s the epitome of flair. The high-water mark of skill. It’s dashing, it’s daring, it’s the full David Ginola.
It was a footballing equivalent of Ecce Homo, the lost Caravaggio painting that recently sent the art world into a tizzy
It’s likely that you have seen it, if not before today, then in the last 20 seconds. I love the way football can turn from something so gruesome and shit to the complete opposite in a trice. The keeper’s attempt at a punch is so bad, but Ginola immediately sees it as a chance to go on one. He is thinking three steps ahead, moving back even before the ball drops into a chasm, giving himself the space to control the ball that spits up off the sodden turf and moves it laterally with his thigh. He has revealed his hand to everyone, but they are mentally and physically incapable of keeping up with this particular three-card trick. The touch up and over the defender, while he’s half in the air and his right leg is ramrod straight, is just SO FUCKING CHEF’S KISS that it still, nearly 30 years on, makes me feel electric, and as for the finish … by Ecce Homo H Christ the finish.