The story of Roy Essandoh’s FA Cup quarter-final goal is about as close as football gets to a piece of dreamed-up fiction. Essandoh was a non-league striker who had spent several years traversing the lower leagues in Scotland and Finland, trying to make a name for himself without much luck, before he stumbled across a football club in need.

Wycombe Wanderers had put an advert on Teletext (a kind of rudimentary internet on your TV without cat videos, kids) looking for a striker to ease their injury crisis. Apparently not many were browsing the ad pages that week, because only Essandoh replied. He turned up at training, signed a two-week contract and found himself on the bench for the biggest game in the club’s history.

Wycombe travelled to Premier League side Leicester City for a feisty encounter, with Robbie Savage at the heart of it all in midfield. The Wycombe manager, Laurie Sanchez, was sent off for his sideline exuberance as things boiled over. With half an hour to go and the game locked at 1-1, Wycombe turned to their unknown striker on the bench and, in shamelessly clichéd fashion, Essandoh headed home a last-minute winner to send third tier Wycombe into the FA Cup semi-finals.

The football world was left bemused as the story of the Teletext striker spread, as was Sanchez. “I don’t know hardly anything about him,” he said afterwards. “I only met him the Tuesday before last.” Essandoh was thrown into the limelight, but it soon faded. Wycombe lost the semi-final to Liverpool and when their strikers returned to fitness, he was not offered a contract. Despite some non-league success Essandoh never returned to professional football, but he will always own a little slice of FA Cup magic. LO

Roy Essandoh celebrates victory over Leicester City. Photograph: Reuters Photographer / Reuters/Reuters

Victor Wanyama, of all people, had given Celtic a first-half lead against Barcelona on home turf. With 18 minutes to play at Celtic Park, and with Neil Lennon’s side still hanging on to their one-goal lead, the manager made a brave move: withdrawing defender Mikael Lustig for the 18-year-old striker, Tony Watt, a £100,000 signing from Airdrie. After all, Watt was a man in-form, sort of, after netting at Dundee United three days earlier.

The rest, as they say, is history. The teenager, on his Champions League debut, seized on a mistake by Xavi and drove towards goal. Javier Mascherano was in hot pursuit but before he could get near him, Watt powered the ball low beyond Victor Valdés. It was a vital second, and a goal that won them the game given Lionel Messi’s consolation strike – how often can you say that?

He glided towards the corner flag on his knees before an ecstatic young steward embraced Watt over the advertising hoardings. Would this goal prove a springboard? His next goal for Celtic would come four days later, at home to St Johnstone, but that was his lot. Ten months later, he joined Lierse on loan before permanent stints at Standard Liège and Charlton Athletic. Fruitless loan spells have followed and his manager’s tacit word of warning post-match came back to bite him. “Don’t let this be all you are remembered for,” Lennon said. BF

Admittedly the tag ‘one-goal wonder’ is a little harsh on Federico Macheda. Since leaving Manchester United he has scored 38 goals and at 25 he has time to score plenty more important ones. But it is an inescapable fact that goal number one was pretty wondrous – the unknown teenager who changed the course of the 2009 title race.

A couple of weeks earlier, United had been cruising towards another Premier League crown thanks in no small part to a front four of Cristiano Ronaldo, Wayne Rooney, Carlos Tevez and Dimitar Berbatov. But then Liverpool – their closest title challengers – thumped them 4-1 at Old Trafford and, still swaying, they lost to Fulham a week later. With nine games to go, Liverpool ousted United from the top of the table.

To make things worse for Alex Ferguson’s side, injuries had hit. Never one to shy away from playing the kids, the manager turned to his reserve team and told the forwards that a big performance in their next game would earn them a spot in his senior squad; Macheda scored a hat-trick. The 17-year-old from Rome had spent much of the year feeling homesick and struggling to adapt, yet suddenly found himself on the bench at Old Trafford.

Villa went 2-1 ahead shortly after half-time and a third straight defeat beckoned, so after 60 minutes Ferguson called on the teenager on the bench. Ronaldo scored a late equaliser to rouse the crowd and then, with seconds left, Ryan Giggs slid a pass into the box. Macheda only needed two touches, the first a brilliant Cruyff-turn to deceive his marker, the second an unstoppable curling shot to win the game. United were out of the rut, back on top spot, and they never relinquished it. LO

That familiar sinking feeling was just setting in among those in the away end at Selhurst Park, with Fulham pegged back by an Adrian Mariappa header inside seven minutes. It was October 2013, and Martin Jol’s side had not won on the road since the opening day of the season, when Pajtim Kasami nodded home at the back post. That was his first league goal for the club, but Kasami’s second was a real beauty.

Steve Sidwell plays a tidy give and go with Sascha Riether, all the while Kasami readies himself to make a lung-busting run from the halfway line. Riether loops a ball forward for the Swiss midfielder, who darts in between Mariappa and Damian Delaney before allowing the ball to thump down on his chest with his first touch and arrowing a right-footed volley beyond Julian Speroni from an acute angle with his second.



There were inevitably comparisons with Marco van Basten’s effort at Euro 88. “It was better than you think,” Jol said. “He [Kasami] controlled it on his chest and put it in the other corner. Marco’s was very different. You can’t compare them, but this was better.” Kasami would only score once more for Fulham, relegated that season, before joining Olympiakos the following summer. As for Jol, this was the last win of his Fulham reign before being replaced by René Meulensteen, following four straight defeats. BF

As moments come, this could not have been any sweeter for Yuri Zhirkov. It was in October 2010 against Spartak Moscow, the team that rejected him as a youngster, that he struck his first and only goal for Chelsea, in the Champions League, in the Russian capital. Chelsea had paid CSKA Moscow £18m for Zhirkov in 2009, and upon arrival he said “everything was super”, after being whizzed around the club’s Cobham training ground. Zhirkov was 25 and a Russia international when he signed for Chelsea, so hardly an unknown quantity, but barring this strike he endured a relatively fruitless time in London.

Mikel John Obi’s hopeful ball forward in search of Nicolas Anelka was cut out by Nicolás Pareja, but his header landed right at the feet of an onrushing Zhirkov. The ball bounced once, inviting Zhirkov with open arms to lash it home, ploughing his left boot through it and sending the ball beyond the goalkeeper Andrey Dikan. Zhirkov blew a kiss to the travelling supporters before Paulo Ferreira and Michael Essien patted him on the head for a job well done – exquisitely done, in fact – after ending his 13-month wait for a Chelsea goal.

This was as good as it got, though, and after only 29 league appearances across two seasons, he returned to Russia to join Anzhi Makhachkala. He has remained in his homeland ever since, signing for Zenit St Petersburg last year (where he was briefly reunited with André Villas-Boas, who granted his sale to Anzhi) after three seasons at Dinamo Moscow. BF

Yuri Zhirkov joined Zenit St Petersburg in 2016. Photograph: Joep Leenen/AFP/Getty Images

6) Jimmy Glass (Carlisle United v Plymouth Argyle, 1999)

Go to any stats page for the former goalkeeper Jimmy Glass and you’ll see an innocent-looking number one in his goals column; rarely has the impact of one solitary goal been so underplayed.

In 1999, the 25-year-old Londoner joined struggling Carlisle United on an emergency loan deal from Swindon Town late in the season. Carlisle needed to win their final match, against Plymouth Argyle, to avoid ending a 70-year stay in the Football League. At 1-1, in the final seconds, the 6ft 4in Glass trundled upfield for a last-ditch corner with the encouragement of his young manager Nigel Pearson and a roaring Brunton Park, and pounced on a rebound to become Carlisle’s unlikely saviour. Cue hysteria, with Glass leapt upon by several thousand delirious fans before leaving the pitch on their shoulders.

It was an amazing if slightly surreal high point for Glass. He couldn’t get a game the following season and, at 27, retired from football. He moved to Dorset and became an IT salesman before setting up a taxi firm, all the while trying to make sense of what had happened. “I did ask Rodney Marsh once,” Glass told the Independent on the goal’s 10th anniversary. “I couldn’t get my head round it. I thought, ‘Well if I’m such a legend, right, how come I haven’t got a contract or nobody wants me to play in goal?’ I said, ‘Rodney, am I a legend?’ He said, ‘No, you’re not a legend, Jimmy, but your goal is legendary’. It made sense from that point on.”

Glass struggled with gambling as he came to terms with his fallout from the game, but found solace in his family life and overcame his addiction. Today he is a player liaison officer at Bournemouth, the club he had most success with as a young keeper. “Now I’ve come to terms with the fact that the goal is a wonderful, wonderful piece of sporting history and in certain parts of football, and obviously up in Cumbria, it’s a legendary goal. But it is what it is. It’s a goal. Life goes on and I enjoy it now for what it is.” LO