40 Greatest Goals in World Cup History: #25 Eder: Brazil vs USSR ('82)

Ah, that 1982 Brazil team.

Redefining Joga Bonita. Playing football in its purest form. A bunch of joyriders in canary yellow hijacking the grandest stage of them all to use it as a canvas for their particularly pleasing brand of art.

Tele Santana asking people to do whatever they wanted. Dr. Socrates smoking cigarettes and stroking that magnificent beard of his while toying with everyone on the pitch. Zico curling in freekicks for fun. Falcao running the midfield.

And Eder doing this:

It's an absolute cracker, isn't it?

You don't really see it coming, they're just knocking it about harmlessly till Junior lumps one up to Serginho (they were not averse to the occasional route-one, were this team). The big man doesn't win the header, but it falls to Isidoro out on the right wing. He looks up, sees Falcao on the inside channel and plays a regular ball into his feet.

All normal, all routine. Then, it happens.

Falcao dummies the ball with the studied nonchalance of a man who knows how good he and his mates are. Eder steams onto it, flicks it up and then absolutely leathers it into the bottom right corner past a flabbergasted Rinat Dasayev (who, in case you didn't know was one of the best in the world at the time) whose expression mirrors those of the rest of the Soviets... "Oh, F*** Me"

Look at it in isolation, and you'd assume it was just a bunch of flamboyant superstars showboating against weaker opposition... except the USSR were no underdog, and they'd been leading for large swathes of the game. This one, this thunderbas**** was the winner.

In the heat of the World Cup, under the most pressure a professional athlete can face, Eder and Falcao decided to have fun. That's what made this team great.

And that's why this goal is on our list of 40 Greatest Goals in World Cup History

Bonus: In the same game, Dr. Socrates did this too. This was the equaliser... bloody 'ell