This week’s Oh You Beauty has a decidedly international flavor about it, given the club break this week. The international break can sometimes be a bit of a snooze-fest for many watching, with many of the players more focused on not getting hurt than winning the game. That wasn’t the case this past week, though, with some absolute pearls of goals in the offering.
5. Roberto Firmino vs Austria
First up is the winning goal against Austria. This goal is part excellence, part bad defending. Roberto Firmino should have been closed down from that distance and is instead given the opportunity to shoot. He does so, with gusto, and plants the ball past the Austrian keeper.
4. Nawaf Al-Abed vs Yemen
A few weeks back, I wrote about a Demba Ba goal that reached 77 mph. Here, Nawaf Al-Abed unleashes a vicious 93 kph (58 mph) rocket that blew past the keeper in the blink of an eye.
3. Brady vs United States
Man, this one hurts to write about. I bet Alexi Lalas was especially torn. I joke a lot about his love of a free kick goal, but this one was genuinely beautifully taken. The speed and accuracy on the shot, and the methodical strike, show us the incredible amount of practice that is required to get that good at free kicks.
2. Isco vs Belarus
I was incredibly torn on which should get first place this week. In the end, I kind of decided that both deserve it, so this second place is more of a shared first. Why? Just look at it. That is a literal “upper-90” goal. No keeper in the world can save that. You can’t see any space between the ball and the corner of the net. The perfect example of where you want to put a ball when you shoot.
1. Xherdan Shaqiri vs Lithuania
I put this goal at first because of the move that Shaqiri used to tap that ball in. It wasn’t even a shot. Just the lightest of touches. From behind the planted foot. While moving at a fast speed. To beat a well-placed keeper. There were so many things working against that goal, so many places that could have gone wrong and ruined it. In this case, though, everything clicked.
