🔝 The five best goals of 2022 | OneFootball

2022 has us spoiled for choice for outrageous goals, with the Women’s Euros and Men’s World Cup finals having taken place in the same year on top of all the usual club competitions.

Here’s our pick of the bunch, with the best five goals of the year.

5. Brad Potts (Luton 0-1 Preston, 13th August)

Preston North End paid £1.5m for Brad Potts back in 2019, and we reckon he’s worth that transfer fee in this goal alone.

The position of the Luton defenders make this chance more difficult than the scissor-kick scored by Brazil’s Richarlison in the World Cup against Serbia, Potts with almost no time or space to smash home that kind of rip-roaring finish.

Superb.

4. Erling Haaland (Manchester City 2-1 Borussia Dortmund, 18th September)

After scoring 86 goals in 89 total appearances for Borussia Dortmund, it was time for Erling Haaland to give his former side a taste of what it was like to face him.

Of course, Manchester City had drawn the Bundesliga outfit in the Champions League group stages immediately after his transfer, and after John Stones had cancelled out Jude Bellingham’s opener, the match looked to be heading for a stalemate.

But Haaland had not yet had his say, and his determination to find the net against his former side saw him contort his body in a truly unnatural way to do so in dramatic fashion.

With his goalscoring record, you’d have to admit it was pretty much inevitable.

3.  Vinicius Jr (Manchester City 4-3 Real Madrid, 26th April)

It started with a turn from Vinícius Jr. to leave Fernandinho standing on the halfway line, and finished when he slotted home past Ederson.

In a Champions League semi-final no less.

With the scores at 3-1, it looked like Manchester City would be going into the second leg with a two-goal cushion, but one of the most entertaining knockout matches the competition had ever seen ended at 4-3 thanks in part to that strike from the Real Madrid youngster that had made it 3-2.

We now know that Real Madrid would win the second leg 3-1 to send them into the final with a 6-5 aggregate scoreline.

Their fans won’t forget that Vini Jr. stunner that helped to get them there.

2. Alessia Russo (England 4-0 Sweden, 26th July)

England’s women lifted the Euro 2020 trophy on home soil in the summer after a tense and evenly-match encounter with Germany.

That was surely the toughest test Sarina Wiegman’s side have ever come through but – in very un-England like fashion – the Lionesses were truly dominant in their semi-final with Sweden.

The icing on the cake from that match was a truly stunning backheel goal from Alessia Russo, one that only the most confident of players would’ve attempted, especially in a game of that magnitude.

When asked about her magic moment, Russo was keen to downplay that stroke of genius. “We were actually working on cut-backs in training the other day!,” she told England’s official website.

“Once it fell back to me, I thought ‘what’s the quickest route for me to get this ball in the back of the net?’ because I should have scored in the first place, so I just swung a foot at it and luckily it hit the back of the net.”

Swung a foot at it.

1.  Ángel Di Maria (Argentina 3-3 France, 18th December)

Sometimes the best goals aren’t the ones from furthest out, the most acrobatic, or the hardest hit.

Often it’s the occasion that matters, or the passage of play that leads up to the finish.

Both of those things are true about Ángel Di María’s strike that put Argentina 2-0 up in the World Cup final, as Lionel Messi, Julian Álvarez and Alexis MacAllister all had a part to play in the crisp passing that led to the goal.

Di Maria defied his 34 years with the sprint that it took to get onto the pass and – with three goals in three major finals for Argentina – you can see exactly why the Juventus winger is the definition of a big-game player.

You can’t really get much better than holding your nerve on the biggest of football stages to perfectly execute the finish beyond the goalkeeper.

What a way to end 2022.