101 Great Goals - Antonin Panenka

Can a penalty be a great goal? It can be, when it's the greatest penalty ever taken.

For all it's audacity and courage, it's worth considering the aesthetic effect the Belgrade Continental D's which smothered the shot, have played in making this penalty so memorable.




Compare and contrast with the following Panenka penalties:

ZIDANE



Zidane's penalty, 5 minutes into the 2006 World Cup final is certainly audacious, but has the ball not striking net reduced it's impact on the collective memory?

PIRLO



Much of the commentary resulting from Pirlo's peerless kick focused on Joe Hart sprawled on his backside rather than the kick itself. Might this have something to do with the ball hitting the net like a ball against a wall in training?

UEFA Champions League Final Special - Hampden Park

Hampden Park has hosted two of the superlative moments of Champions League - or European Cup - history.

In 1960 Real Madrid won their fifth title, scoring seven into the Iron Man stanchions and destroying Eintracht Frankfurt.




42 years later Madrid were back in Glasgow for their ninth title. The old stanchions had gone but Hampden laid on 1960-style black nets, in tribute. Zidane did the rest.

Hampden Park - Iron Man

Through the Scottish glory days of the late 1960's and 1970's the iconic and instantly recognisable Hampden nets were hooked up to a couple of 4 x 4's and stretched tiiight over wrought iron girders to form goal structures at once imposing and forbidding but somewha stylish and confident in their own way. What the Scots call gallus.

Then, as the team's performances dipped in the 1980's, so did the goalnets. They sagged as if struggling under the weight of expectation until the old square 4 x 4's and stanchions were retired in 1988 and replaced by a set of Continental D supports so random and out-of-place in the vast bowl of a stadium that they must have fallen off the back of a lorry.

The D's were in turn replaced by the inevitable box nets of today in time for this -

The best goal ever scored at Hampden?