The FIFA Puskás Award, or: Comparing Beautiful Goals

Sepp Blatter was in Budapest today to unveil the all new FIFA Puskás Award, named after legendary Hungarian Ferenc Puskás. The award will be bestowed upon whichever player is deemed to have scored “the most beautiful goal” of the year, and presented to that player at the FIFA World Player Gala on December 21st, 2009, alongside the FIFA World Player of the Year award (and others). So it’s a pretty big deal.

I’m always a little skeptical of any official “goal of the year” award, to be honest. How can you say one great goal is more beautiful than another? How can you compare a goal from a beautiful passing move versus a dribble versus an overhead kick versus a long range strike? They’re just so very very different.

More importantly, goals are such a subjective thing. You could say the same about the World Player of the Year award, but at least there’s a whole year’s worth of evidence to weigh. With goals there’s just the moment.

It’s one thing for a magazine or a blog to nominate a “goal of the year”, because it only carries a certain amount of weight and is ultimately recognized as just a bit of fun. But a full on FIFA award seems a little more serious.

In FIFA’s defence, this won’t just be Sepp Blatter picking a name out of a hat. FIFA will draw up a shortlist towards the end of November, the goals will appear on the FIFA website, and then we the public can vote. Although that system still leaves the voting open to all kinds of factors unrelated to the quality of the goal, for example Man Utd or England fans voting for a Wayne Rooney goal, or refusing to vote for a Cristiano Ronaldo.

Here is FIFA’s selection criteria:

1. It should be a beautiful goal (subjective – the spread of goals should include long-range shots, team goals, overhead kicks, etc.).

2. The importance of the match should be taken into account (objective – limited to “A” international teams, confederation championships and national top-division club matches: the more important the goal, the better).

3. The goal should not be the result of luck or mistakes by the other team.

4. The goal should support fair play, i.e. the player should not have behaved badly in the game or have been charged with doping, for example.

5. Only goals scored from July 2008 to July 2009 will be considered.

Whatever problems there may be, it will give us all an excuse to see and to honour some beauties, which is never a bad thing. Provided we don’t take the eventual result too seriously. And credit to FIFA for naming this award after Ferenc Puskás, rather than, say, an Atlanta based fizzy drinks manufacturer.

Let’s round off this post with a nice Puskás YouTuber. There are plenty of Puskás compilations out there, and they’re absolutely worth your time. But for some reason my favourite is this eight second clip subtitled “The Best Left Foot Ever”. It’s Puskás scoring for Hungary vs England in 1953, part of Hungary’s 6-3 win and the first time England had ever lost at Wembley. Puskás pulls a dragback to fool Wolves legend Billy Wright and then buries it with a near post shot finish. Class:

Here’s a second view of it:

Some Related Stories:

Category: World Football