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Why I Love This Goal – Part 3

I love goals, we all love goals unless they are conceded against you but even if they are then sometimes you just have to applaud sheer moments of genuis. In this series I’ve already covered goals by Ronaldo (original) and Tony Yeboah and now it is time to move on to the third in the series.

The next one is quite possibly my favourite ever goal – whether I’ll add many more to this series I don’t know but if this is the last one then it arguably the most fitting. Ladies and Gentlemen I present to you Dennis Bergkamp, now to be fair I could have named a fair few of his goals in this article with the majority of them coming in Arsenal colours.

As a Tottenham fan that would have been perhaps something which would be difficult to do but thankfully there is a caveat to all of this and that is because this goal was scored on international duty for Holland against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup.

It was a Saturday afternoon as Argentina just days before had knocked England out in the Second Round, with that game seeing David Beckham being sent off for lashing out at Diego Simeone and Kevin Keegan doing his worst prediction of all time when he said that David Batty would score from the spot.

Going into this game any England fans would have more than likely transferred their support to the Dutch for the afternoon (well I certainly did, I may have only been 14 to be fair so whether that was the done thing I’m not too sure – as a side note this is my favourite ever World Cup)

And with the clock running down the game was at 1-1 and very much looking like it was going to Extra Time, the second such time that Argentina would have to deal with this in less than a week. Surely by then they would be running on empty and the Dutch would be favourites to progress after 30 additional minutes.

That is until Dennis Bergkamp had other ideas. Frank De Boer sent a speculative cross field pass from left to right and the Arsenal forward killed the ball stone dead. That was an impressive enough feat of it’s own but then here came the magic.

After plucking the ball out of the air, he then swiftly turned the ball inside Roberto Ayala and with the ball teed up nicely he fired past Carlos Roa and scored a dramatic last minute winner to put Holland through to the Semi Finals of the World Cup.

It’s an amazing goal anyway but the fact it came in the last minute just seems to add to the allure of the finish, a world class finish by a world class player on the world’s biggest stage they simply do not get any better than that in my opinion.

It’s a goal that leaves you speechless but at the same time in your head you are thinking to yourselves “just how did he do that?” The control was impressive, the touch was perfect, the finish was sublime. I remember that goal as if it was yesterday when it was now over 19 years old.

To be honest my words do not really do it the justice it deserves – therefore I’ll let the video do the talking. Great commentary from the legendary Barry Davies

But then again it sounds even better with the Dutch commentary

And that is why I love this goal

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