Smith’s dour reaction might possibly be at least in part due to the identity of the team that has scored that goal and the one that conceded it.Īnd is that a problem for broadcasters? Should partisan pundits be involved in these games? Smith has no such mitigation, and a wonderful goal sure to be repeated forever now simply doesn’t have the commentary track it deserves.ĭoes any of this matter? Not really, but there’s another issue here. Martin Tyler also failed to do himself or Lamela justice on this occasion (“He has arrived with a goal”) but at least has the slight excuse of perhaps being as bamboozled in that moment by what had happened as Arsenal were.

From people on the pitch, to having to say that’s magnificent, to schoolboy’s own stuff, to Agueroooooooooooooo and The Gary Neville Goalgasm. Great commentary can elevate a brilliant or important goal.

What an absolutely outrageous goal from Erik Lamela 😍 /stdEmbY4uwĪnd it’s a shame, it really is. There is literally not one single word available in the entire English language more mundane than “trundled”. The guilty co-commentator is Alan Smith, who has managed to make it sound both mundane and – arguably worse – also like a bit of a fluke. The goal being described above was, of course, Erik Lamela’s absurd rabona in the North London Derby. There’s a place for the latter, no doubt, but it’s just all slightly lower-brow isn’t it? I put it to you that the best goals are goals that make you laugh and the best goals that make you laugh are those born of outrageously funny brilliance rather than outrageously funny catastrophe. It is, therefore, a wholly inadequate piece of co-commentary to describe one of the most audacious and flat-out brilliant goals you could ever wish to see. Does it sound like the sort of goal that makes you jump out of your seat, invent four new swear words and then laugh your cock clean off at the base while marvelling at the sheer absurdity of all you’ve just witnessed? Now try and picture a goal that could accurately be described by those words. Pretend you don’t know what goal is being described there, or which co-commentator is doing the describing. “One of those flicks that invariably don’t come off, but this time it’s just trundled into the far corner.”

Lamela rabona goal