“My favourite goal is the one from Dimitri Payet, then Kylian Mbappe, and then Francisco Gonzalez Metilli.” Marcin Oleksy is giving his verdict on the top goals among the nominations for the 2022 Puskas Award, FIFA’s prize for the best goal scored by anyone, anywhere over the course of the year.
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But he is not merely offering his opinion with friends in a bar or on social media like the countless fans who have cast their votes for the winner; Oleksy is assessing the competition as a peer up against stars such as Paris Saint-Germain‘s Mbappe, Tottenham Hotspur‘s Richarlison and Manchester United‘s Alessia Russo after becoming the first-ever amputee footballer to be shortlisted for the prize. And, for him, Mbappe may have scored a hat trick in a World Cup final, but his nominated goal is overshadowed by that for another Frenchman.
“It’s the decision he took to score from that area of the pitch, the strength of the shot and the technique,” he tells ESPN, in an interview conducted via a translator, of Payet’s sumptuously arrowed long-range strike for Marseille. “You have to be really technically good to score this goal so precisely from that area.”
Those same words could also be used to describe the goal that…
