Ajax score freekick from five feet in loin-girding moment

We soccer fans like to think that every goal is unique and different, but every so often you do get to see something rare. I’m a total sucker for indirect freekicks from inside the penalty box, which happens once every comet. An illegal back-pass to the keeper is almost never called, and that’s just about the only way you get this sort of thing. It’s the thrown-hockey-stick of soccer. Refs will always look for a way out of it.

And as counterintuitive as it seems, they’re really hard to score off of given the proximity of everyone. It’s the only time the highest level of the game looks like the pack-soccer your five-year-old plays. Ajax’s Dusan Tadic solved the problem by simply hitting it as hard as he could at a FC Midtjylland defender and let it bounce into the net. The intentional plastering of a defender with the ball only adds to the satisfaction.

Here it is:

It’s hard not to be entertained by this, with the entire Midtjylland squad and a couple coaches on the goal line then rushing out like the conclusion to a song in West Side Story, along with no time for Tadic to come up with anything than “hit the fuck out of it.” It’s delightful madness in a sardine can.

It put Ajax up two in the first half, as they looked to keep up with Liverpool and Atalanta in their Champions League group.