This weekend’s soccer action served up a feast of one of the game’s most difficult tricks: the back-heel volley.
Three players, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Jackson Martinez and Tha’er Bawab, used it to score ridiculously
good goals this weekend. We can’t bother deciding which one we like most, so we decided to put it to a vote.
The incomparable Ibramhimovic was at the center of the things in his team’s biggest game of the season. France’s top two team met Sunday, as preseason favorite Paris Saint-Germain visited surprise leader Olympique Marseille.
PSG fell behind early, but Ibrahimovic put his judo training to good use in the 23rd minute. He beat Marseille goalkeeper Steve Mandanda (a French international) with an insane back-heel volley, stabbing home Maxwell‘s corner kick. All he needed was a little bit of space between him and the defender to make the magic happen.
“Ibra” would give his team the lead two minutes later, but PSG let it slep in the second half. The game ended in a 2-2 draw. See Ibrahimovic’s goal in the video below.
Not to be outdone, Martinez scored one of his own … and the Colombian hitman’s might have been better than the legendary Swede’s.
Martinez drew first blood for FC Porto in its Portuguese Liga win over Sporting Lisbon. Right-back Danilo cut inside and chipped a pass into the Sporting box. Martinez, who beat the offside trap with a perfectly timed run, received the pass with his back to goal, juggled it on his knee, then volleyed it past goalkeeper Rui Patricio. All the while, Sporting defender Marcos Rojo was bearing down on him.
Finally, we head to Romania, where Bawab put both his name and his team, Gaz Metan, on the map Saturday.
Gaz Metan, a club toiling near the relegation zone in Romania’s Liga 1, was hosting mighty Dinamo Bucharest, and the score was tied 1-1 in the 35th minute. That changed when Bawab did something incredible.
Victor Astafei delivered a cross into the box, where Bawab was standing with a defender marking him closely. The ball skipped in front of Bawab, but he didn’t mind. His back-heel flick — off the half-volley — left goalkeeper Kristijan Naumovski helpless as it headed into the goal.
The Jordanian international’s fourth goal of the season (in six games games) was not enough to secure the victory. Gaz Metan scored an own goal in the second half, and the game ended in a 2-2 draw. Perhapb they should have given Bawan two goals for a strike of that quality?
Which back-heel volley was the best of the bunch? Vote now.
