101 Great Goals - Paul Breitner

Welcome to the launch of a new series of posts - 101 Great Goals - and I'd like to invite all readers of the blog to nominate their Great Goals on the Facebook page or, better still, post a link and your reasons for liking the goal so much.

What constitutes a Great Goal? As this is The History of Goal Nets, simply any goal can be considered Great if we enjoyed the aesthetics of ball striking net so much that we are moved to nominate that goal.

Your Great Goals can be nominated or posted in any order; Paul Breitner's isn't necessarily the greatest goal.  The point of 101 Great Goals is not to rank the goals, but enjoy them (as they hit the net).

So to my first choice - Paul Breitner v Chile at the 1974 World Cup.



He's scoring into the hated box nets, I hear you cry. That's certainly true, but in the mid 1970's - when everyone at home had stanchions or D's - the free-hanging nets at the 1974 finals were paradoxically the epitome of sophistication. And some - like those in the West Berlin Olimpiastadion above - actually had pretty good ball retention.

I always loved Paul Breitner's goal for the way the ball seemed to stop and hang in the air after it hit the very top corner of the net, before gently bouncing to the ground.

World Cups - West Germany 1974

Before the violence and negativity of the 1986 and 1990 tournaments plunged the game to new depths of despair, the 1974 World Cup with its miserly 2.55 goals per game was considered the nadir of football history. At a distance of 35 years it can now be seen as the apotheosis of European football. Holland destroyed Uruguay, Argentina and Brazil. West Germany became champions and the pace and tempo demonstrated by each became the new standard in world football

Matches were played at 9 different stadia but for the first time the on-field architecture was standardised.

So be they in Berlin

or Hamburg


the new box goalnets were the same - and would themselves go on to become the first class standard in world football.