By Chris Wright
The ten nominees for the 2013 Puskas Award (i.e, FIFA’s Goal of the Year award) have been announced this morning and a wonderful cavalcade of scorchers, pingers and screamers they are too.
As always, FIFA have whittled the long-list down to their chosen ten using their FOUR CRITERIA OF DOOM!: 1) aesthetics, 2) importance, 3) whether the goal was a result of any luck/defensive error and, 4) whether it was scored in the spirit of fair play.
The nominees are as follows…
1. Peter Ankersen (Esbjerg) vs AGF…
2. Lisa De Vanna (Sky Blue FC) vs Boston Breakers…
3. Antonio Di Natale (Udinese) vs Chievo…
4. Zlatan Ibrahimovic (Sweden) vs England…
5. Panagiotis Kone (Bologna) vs Napoli…
6. Louisa Necib (Lyon) vs St Etienne…
7. Daniel Luduena (Pachua) vs Tigres…
8. Nemanja Matic (Benfica) vs Porto…
9. Juan Manuel Olivera (Nautico) vs Sport Recife…
10. Neymar (Brazil) vs Japan…
We love, love, love Di Natale’s immaculate volley against Chievo with all our heart and it’s about time the little man had his uniformly sterling work for Udinese given a little more credit, but there’s only one winner as far as we’re concerned: Zlatan – solely on the basis that we’re never ever going to see a goal like that again in our lifetime.
Watching it back, it’s still absolutely unbelievable now – a clear calendar year after it went in!
As always, if you’d like to officially vote through FIFA’s various channels, then you can do so here.
If you’d like to just tell us who your favourite is, then give us a nudge in the comments box.