Arda Turan--it WAS a great goal.

Today, the Guardian newspaper ran an article asking why there haven't been any great goals at this year's European Championships yet. To that I would respond thus:



That's Arda Turan's matchwinner against Swtizerland. At first it seems like a speculative shot that took a lucky deflection, not a memorable goal at all, but closer inspection reveals just how great it is. Here are ten reasons why:

1. It didn't take a deflection. Deflections lead to goals. The keeper thinks a shot is easy meat and then a clumsy teammate's shin strikes the minutest of glancing blows to send it past him in the opposite direction, or his center half dives in to stop it and only succeeds in turning a benign daisy-cutter into an unstoppable pearler.

But this wasn't one of those goals. It looks like it was, but it wasn't. Not at all. Look at the replay again, find more to look at if you're still not convinced. It didn't touch any Swiss player. But it looked like it did. How does that happen?

2. He hit it across his body while moving away from the goal. You're just not supposed to do that. When they teach you how to shoot, they tell you to put your head over the ball and lean into it. They also tell you you can get a much better strike off if you move into your shot, and not away from it. Arda thumbed his nose at that advice with this goal and put himself at a considerable disadvantage--his feet had to compensate for so much more because of it. From his perspective, he was shooting more behind himself than in front.

3. There were at least two Swiss defenders, plus the goalkeeper in front of him.
To aim it past those obstacles amidst all of the other calculations he also had to make required a speed of thought mere mortals just don't posess.

4. This is the big one: the shot itself. How did he do that? If there were cannons capable of doing what Arda's shot did, then war would be an even more dangerous affair than it is. Let me explain:

5. Its power. From that angle, going in that direction, with that shot, he hit it so hard that the Swiss goalkeeper, Diego Benaglio, didn't even have time to see it, let alone react.

6. The dip it took. Any professional player can hit it that hard, but I haven't seen one do that with what looked like a lob. It was like an eagle taking off, spotting a rat inside the goal net, and then diving sharply to capture it. The ball was alive once Arda's foot hit it. I wouldn't have even known it was possible to strike a shot like that, let alone been able to execute it.

7. It dipped just as it got over Benaglio's head. This is more of an artistic point. Goals just need to end up in the net. Anything else is, as they say, gravy. And the scorer is by no means obligated to add an aesthetic touch--or even capable of doing so. But they are all the more pleasing when they have that extra bonus which this one happened to. It was almost surrealistic.

8. He ran half the field to shoot. All of that and it came at the end of a fifty-yard sprint, followed by a ten-yard cutback. I would have been too exhausted to swing my foot, let alone in such an insouciant fashion.

9. It was set against a truly farcical game. The rain that day in Basel fell in sheets and added an extra element of unpredictability to the game. Every pass along the ground was suddenly a massive risk because there were huge puddles to trap the ball and trip up players. Jerseys were soaked, muddy and torn. The Swiss took the lead in the first place because they were the first to realize they simply had to keep the ball airborne, and even then they were helped by a puddle that captured the ball just in front of the goal for Hakan Yakin to tap in. I could have scored it. Hog-tied and paraplegic.

There was no room for sublime technique. Arda had no right to be trying something that crafty and tricky. He was defying not only the Swiss team and the Swiss crowd, but nature itself.

10. Timing. It was a winning goal in the last minute. If the Turks hadn't scored it, they would have been almost out of the tournament, but Arda stepped up to try something audacious in the last minute. So add to technical ability massive, massive courage.