Darren Bent beach ball goal: The sad story of Liverpool fan who threw the object | OneFootball

Highlights

Darren Bent's 'beach ball' goal for Sunderland against Liverpool will go down in Premier League folklore. On October 17 2009, Bent's effort looked set to be saved by goalkeeper Pepe Reina before it struck a beach ball and changed direction and confused the Spanish goalkeeper. It will always be one of the most bizarre and hilarious moments in Premier League history.

What happened with Bent's beach ball goal?

Bent recalled the goal for Sky Sports years later, saying: "Andy Reid got down the line on the right. He had a wand of a left foot - but as it was on his right foot, I knew he'd cut it back and get it into a good area. I remember it coming across the box and as it bounced up and was on its way to me, I was thinking to myself, 'hit the target. Hit the target'. I didn't connect with it that well but I knew it was going on target… Then it hit the beach ball and went in!”

As per the laws of football, the goal shouldn't have stood due to an 'outside interference' meaning the game should have been stopped. "I remember the referee's face at half-time when he came to see me," said Bent. "He said 'did it hit the ball?'. When I said, 'Yeah', there was panic in his face. He realised he'd made a bit of a mistake!"

Carragher: The goal was just surreal

On the Liverpool side that day was Jamie Carragher. “It’s mad when you actually think about it," he said. “I never lost a game of football in stranger circumstances. I mean, what the hell was it even doing there? Who takes a beach ball to the north-east in the middle of October? It was just surreal. I don’t remember being that angry about it because I couldn’t really work out what had happened. I knew it was something weird but I didn’t know quite what.”

Callum Campbell was responsible for the beach ball

But imagine being the Liverpool fan responsible for throwing that beach ball onto the pitch. Imagine sitting in the stands at the Stadium of Light knowing you've effectively contributed to seeing your beloved side lose 1-0 thanks to a goal that will be talked about for many, many years to come.

Well, spare a thought for Callum Campbell. Callum was just 16 at the time of the match and he owned up hitting the beach ball onto the pitch before Bent inadvertently scored via a deflection off of it. But things turned sour as soon as he returned home to Liverpool.

“It was me,” he said the night after the match. “I’m the one who did it. I’m the one caught on camera. I’m so, so sorry. This is my worst, worst nightmare. When I got home I went into the garden and threw up. I was physically sick – and that’s before the death threats started appearing on the internet the next day. How was I supposed to know what would happen? It was just a bit of fun, and if I could turn back the clock and do it differently, throw the ball into the crowd instead of on to the pitch, then I would.

“Television made it look like I lobbed the beach ball on to the pitch and straight away it hit the match ball. But the truth is, the game hadn’t started. The teams were just coming out, and the beach ball wasn’t even mine. I’d never seen one before. The crowd were bouncing it around above their heads, then it came my way, and I just took a big swing and knocked it towards the pitch. After that the wind carried it into the net. I can’t believe it stayed there. It would have taken someone a couple of seconds to move it away, or put a foot on it and flatten it, but nobody bothered. And then it started to roll about. Just at the wrong moment.”

Callum received death threats after the match

Death threats started to appear on the internet shortly afterwards.

“Leave town kid – stay home or you’re dead!” one wrote. Another said “Get a coffin ready.” And another warned: “I’m not only going to stab you but mince you up and make curry out of it.”

Campbell said: “When I looked closer these people were from America and Australia and all over the world – so-called fans who never come to Liverpool. So after that, I just ignored them.

“I knew the true fans wouldn’t threaten me like that – they would know I was more cut up about what happened than anyone else. Even so, it’s a pretty unpleasant place to find yourself.”

Campbell’s mum, Liz, still remembers her son's horrified reaction when he returned home from the match.

“Callum walked in after the match white as a sheet,” Liz said. “He couldn’t eat. He normally has a pizza delivered when he gets back from a match, but he couldn’t face anything. He just sat at the table with his head in his hands and he kept going over and over what had happened.

“He said, ‘Do you think I was to blame Mum?’ As a mother, and a Liverpool fan, I told him no, he wasn’t. Liverpool FC is the love of his life. Not girls, or music, or clothes – Liverpool. He shouldn’t have to go through the rest of his life being known as the fan who lost them a match.”

In the end, a loss to Sunderland really made no difference to Liverpool's disappointing campaign. They finished seventh under Rafa Benitez - 23 points behind eventually winners Chelsea. At the time, Callum's uncle probably didn't help matters by imagining the unthinkable. “Let’s say Liverpool are just three points short of winning the league at the end of the season – he’ll be beside himself, thinking they were the points that he cost them,” said Campbell’s uncle Tony Moore.

Fortunately for Callum, that was far from the case.