5 strangest goals ever scored in football
In football, goals come in various forms. There are spectacular goals, ugly goals, well-worked goals and lucky goals. But every so often, a goal comes along that rejects such prosaic labels. Every so often we get a truly strange and bizarre goal.
Here are the five strangest goals ever scored in football.
#1 Stefan Kiessling and the goal that wasn’t
Stefan Kiessling’s goal for Bayer Leverkusen in a 2-0 win away to Hoffenheim in October 2013 is strange for two reasons. Firstly because it wasn’t actually a goal and secondly because the Hoffenheim players, of whom there must surely have been at least one or two who had seen that the ball hadn’t gone in, reacted as if it was a perfectly legitimate goal.
A corner was played into the area from the left, Kiessling rose and headed the ball into the side netting. He immediately turned away with his head in his hands, annoyed to have missed. But when he looked again, his teammates were celebrating. He seemed befuddled, sure that he had seen the ball go into the side netting but willing to accept reality as it was now being presented.
The truth was that the ball had hit the side netting but that due to some loose stringing it made its way straight through into the back of the net, misleading the referee into thinking that it had found its way there legally. The goal was given.
In the aftermath of the match, among the mud-slinging back and forth, it was the push for goal-line technology that emerged triumphant.