The Best Goals of 2008 – Part 1 (World Football)

1. 08/01/2009 BD Condell

   Makes me wonder why Manucho has had so little opportunity at Man Utd this season. I at least expected him to get a good run-out in the Carling Cup but not so.

   Don’t know why ferguson bought him if he’s not prepared to give him a chance?

2. 08/01/2009 tom clark

   Excellent question BD, and one I kept asking myself all through my research into the ANC. Obviously Manucho is a raw talent, and if you concentrate on the “raw” you can see why Ferguson has buried him; but if you concentrate on the “talent”–impressive certainly–you can see why offloading him could come back to haunt United. As it is, it would make an interesting wager: who will be gone from Manchester first, Carlitos or Manucho? The first, I think, would be a great loss in the present and near future; the second, possibly a loss not noticed until the farther-off future– when Sir Alex might no longer be around to feel the pain, if there’s any to be felt. But then what would I know, not being The Man Who Has Almost Everything.

3. 08/01/2009 Madschester United

   Rooney, Berbatov, Tevez, Campell/Wellbeck/Manucho. Not many chances to prove yourself in such a lineup. Everytime he has been on the field he has been rather disappointing. I say next year with Tevez gone, and Manucho used to the physical english game, he will become more influential.

   Also, none of the goals really stood out as AWE-Inspiring. Nothing like Cantona’s chip.

4. 08/01/2009 tom clark

   Madschester United–I fear you may rue the day you were so eager to dump Tevez.

   As for the goals in this Internationals section, perhaps it will help you to reach a state of AWE if you simply imagine every one of these goals as being scored by someone in a United shirt. Or then again, you might have reserved judgment until getting to the next chapter–a little closer to home territory for Reds-only “fans”?

5. 09/01/2009 Aditya

   i had a couple of problematic links…the link to diego buonanotte took me instead to a video showcasing the intelligence of crabs. mind you, it’s still a good video, and i half get the feeling the “mistake” was in fact intentional . and the link for elano’s goal took me to a video of olic’s goal against werder bremen, which is also a bloody brilliant goal.

   really good compilation though.

6. 09/01/2009 tom clark

   Aditya–Thanks for catching those two faulty links. I’ve tried posting the corrected ones here in the comments box–three times in fact!–and every time they’ve failed to go up. (Perhaps those crabs ate them?)

   At any rate I’ve now given the corrected links to the patient and helpful Ahmed, and hopefully he will put them up soon so that those Buonanotte and Elano goals may be seen.

7. 09/01/2009 tom clark

   Aditya–Assuming you’re still interested, as it appears the URLs for those two corrected links are going to be devoured by vigilant space crabs every time I try to post them here (six times so far, and they’ve disappeared every time), while we’re waiting for Ahmed’s divine intervention you could, if you wish, find those two goals in the following way:
   1. Go to Daily Motion.com and search “Buonanotte vs. Serbia”.
   2.Go to 101 Great Goals.com and search “Elano vs. Portugal.”
   Hopefully this post will be ignored by the space crabs because it contains no suspicious URLs, and by tomorrow the corrected links which I have supplied to Ahmed will appear in the body of this piece. (Gasp…)

8. 09/01/2009 (tom clark

   (…and a few hours later…) Aditya–Thanks for your patience (and I’m sure that like me you’ve been up all night awaiting these corrected links): the trusty Ahmed now having ridden in to our rescue, the corrected links which I’d posted him are now given above, primed for punching. Never has a goal by Buonanotte or Elano elicited so much anxious anticipation, so I hope the lads don’t now disappoint by showing themselves not gods but mere mortals. (At least, though, neither of them crashed his Maserati in a tunnel last night, suggesting that perhaps there’s some advantage after all to remaining, at least for the nonce, merely human.)
   But you know Aditya I must admit I do miss those nosy little crabs now that they’ve gone. And one imagines they’ve crawled into some interesting new places, given where we saw them last, no?
   (Finally–any tech heads out there, Ahmed included, who can explain to me why a post in this comments box will transmit a You Tube link but not links from other sites? Is this more mere space-crab techno-mystification, or could it have something to do with the Allied Powers of the Great Gods Google and You Tube?)

9. 09/01/2009 (tom clark

   (correction time again…) And make that Maserati a Ferrari. (How could any selfrespecting footie fan not know the difference?) And while we’re free-associating on the tragedies of the gods, has anybody considered how this deity is able to drive a Ferrari into a cement wall and walk away unhurt, yet suffer operatic death throes every time he is “tripped” by a grass blade on the pitch? (But then too one remembers that the dramatic arts are merely another branch of footballing skill.)