Angel Di Maria: The Argentine Master of the Olympic Goal

Angel Di Maria he did it again. The Argentine excelled playing for him Benfica with a house specialty: the olympic goal. The Rosario star had already converted like this with the team’s shirt PSGand now he did it for the Portuguese team, in his farewell to the Champions League.

Benfica beat 3-1 in agonizing fashion against Salzburg and classified the Europa League. The team where another Argentine world champion plays, Nicolas Otamendiarrived at the last date of the group stage knowing that it was already impossible to qualify for the next Champions stage but with the chance of finishing third in the table (behind Inter y Real society) and enter the second major competition in the Old Continent. He did it thanks to the goal difference, which he only reached in the 92nd minute, through the Brazilian Arthur.

In the midst of rumors that indicate him returning to Argentina to play the Copa Libertadores with Rosario Central, the club of his loves and where he began his prodigious career, it is taken for granted that Di María played his last game in the Champions League, a tournament he won in 2014 with Real Madrid.

This afternoon in December 2023, Angelito scored the goal that opened the scoring for the Portuguese champion with a left-footed shot from the corner kick, which took the perfect curve and entered directly into the Salzburg goal, what is commonly called “Olympic goal”.

Fideo is part of a select group of players who achieved a goal of this type, among whom Diego Maradona, David Beckham, Roberto Carlos, Toni Kroos, Mohamed Salah and many others stand out. But he needs to join Lionel Messi, who has also been testing for a while.

As I said, Di María had already made a similar one with the PSG shirt facing Nimes in France. He kicked from the corner and nailed it in the first half, with some complicity from the goalkeeper, who thought the ball was falling in the form of a cross.

However, few remember it but Di María almost converted an Olympic victory in one of the hottest matches of the Argentine National Team in recent times: the quarterfinals against the Netherlands in the World Cup in Qatar.

The team led by Lionel Scaloni suffered an agonizing 2-2 draw and in extra time they had several chances to get back on top on the scoreboard, without needing to go to penalties (where the one who stood out was Dibu Martínez).

One of the many arrivals of the Scaloneta in that extra time was at the feet of Di María, who kicked a corner kick in the last minute and almost nailed it in the corner to goalkeeper Noppert, who stretched his enormous humanity and ended up taking a blow that avoided the 3-2 that would have been historic.

ALMOST OLYMPIC GOAL FOR ANGELITO!

In the last plays of the game, Di María and Enzo Fernández were very close to sentencing him.

We’re going to the prisons ????

Netherlands ???????? 2-2 Argentina ???????? #CatarEnDIRECTV ⚽️ pic.twitter.com/2Wt0BhKo9g

— DSports (@DSports) December 9, 2022

Olympic goals are not common, much less in a World Cup. In fact, there is only one film record and it dates back to the 1962 World Cup, when the Colombian Marco Coll made one for the legendary Russian Lev Yashin.

The Olympic goal: an Argentine invention

The history of the Olympic goal began to be written in these lands almost a hundred years ago. In October 1924, the Uruguayan team that won the Olympic Games traveled to Buenos Aires to play a friendly against Argentina on the Sportivo Barracas field, which, due to the participation of the “Olympians”, curiously served to name three expressions of soccer. : The Uruguayans took the “Olympic” lap, the fence that was inaugurated that day was called “Olympic”, and Cesáreo Onzari (Huracán striker) converted from a corner and scored the first “Olympic” goal.

The corner kick was born as a rule in 1872, and a couple of years later the measurements of the quarter circle from which the famous corner can be taken were determined, which must have a radius of one meter.

However, between 1875 and June 1924, the corner goal was not valid because it was not considered a direct free kick, but rather required the touch of another footballer on the way to the goal. And once that rule was changed, Onzari appeared.

From those days to this day, there is only one person who managed to score an Olympic goal in an Olympic Game, and he did it twice. This is Megan Rapinoe, the American soccer player who recently had to end her legendary career due to an injury.

2023-12-13 01:02:19
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