It doesn’t get much worse than this.
Ali Al-Habsi made one of the all-time worst blunders Saturday. The Wigan goalkeeper mishandled what should have been a routine catch in his goal mouth and fumbled the ball into his own goal.
Unfortunately, Al-Habsi’s gaffe took place in an English Premier League game — the world’s richest and most-watched soccer league — and made headlines and blooper reels around the world.
The Omani stopper was actually playing well up to that point. He’d made a string of saves to preserve his team’s 2-1 lead over Reading. But when Reading’s deflected shot looped into the air in the 79th minute, Al-Habsi just might have had too much time to think about his next move.
Al-Habsi was standing on his goal line as he tried to catch the ball, but it had other ideas. It slipped through his hands, ricocheted off the crossbar, bounced off Al-Habsi again (to add insult to injury) and fell across the goal line.
Luckily, Wigan had a secret weapon in the form of Jordi Gomez to rescue Al-Habsi from further pain. Gomez scored in the 90th minute to give Wigan a 3-2 victory.
See Al-Habsi’s error in the video below.
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Photo via Twitter/AliAlhabsi
