There’s something delicious about scoring a goal by rounding a goalkeeper. There’s something about the poetry-in-motion feel of ball-and-man moving as one. The slightly sadistic joy at seeing a goalkeeper completely confounded. The fact that it’s not at all about power or pace or athleticism, at least not at that isolated moment. There are, though, goals scored by rounding a goalkeeper, and golazos scored by rounding a goalkeeper.
Which is where Cole Palmer comes in. His second goal against Luton Town, Chelsea’s third, is very much the latter. It’s the kind that ends games on the street, the kind that makes a kid a school legend, the kind anyone who kicks around that little football dreams of scoring. And he did it in a Premier League match.
The magic — the bit that makes this ESPN India’s moment of the weekend — is in the little things he does.
The build up to the goal is actually pretty good. Axel Disasi picking out Nicholas Jackson with a direct, line-breaking pass. Jackson drawing Teden Mengi out and leaving him in the dust with a quick turn, before playing a perfectly pitched ball into Palmer’s path. But then, once one-on-one against the onrushing Luton ‘keeper Thomas Kaminski, Palmer takes over and makes the moment his own.
His first touch looks fortuitous at full speed, with the regular view: a ball roll done just well enough to get a deflection off Kaminski’s leg and roll along to where he wanted it, but it’s when you slow it down and reverse the angle that you see it’s not just a regular ball roll. His first touch, the touch to start the roll hits the ball at a particular angle – so along with it rolling to the right, it also bounces up. It’s a very intentional, very sexy touch that completely takes Kaminski out of the equation.
If that move, ripped right out of Mesut Ozil’s textbook of ‘audacious ways to get a ball to bounce’ wasn’t enough, he takes a second touch to steady himself, does a dummy to send Gabriel Osho to the wrong fire and then takes a third touch to allow the scrambling Albert Sambi Lokonga to slide harmlessly next to him before passing it into the empty net with a fourth.
The goal made it 3-0 and it might have gone down as just a formality, but with Chelsea being the way they have been this season, it turned out to be winning goal, the difference maker those four touches of outstanding imagination deserved to be.
Chelsea fans haven’t had a lot to smile about this season, but Palmer (who leads them for goals and assists for the calendar year 2023, despite having joined them halfway through) is certainly one reason for them to be optimistic going into the new year.
