The greatest regret of my life is narrated by Clive Tyldesley. It ends with the English commentator declaring emphatically “Solskjaer has won it!” somewhere around 9.30pm on Wednesday 26 May, 1999. Tyldesley was in the Camp Nou in Barcelona, I was in a pub on Manchester’s Oxford Road. We were both watching the most extraordinary conclusion to a Champions League final.
I should have been in Catalunya with Clive and 90,000 others but my conscience forced me into sitting a first-year university exam instead. It was the wrong decision.
How wrong it was wasn’t apparent for 85 minutes of a mediocre football match controlled by Bayern Munich following Mario Basler’s early free-kick opener. It gave me plenty of time to imagine spending the money I’d saved not shelling out for a last-minute flight to Spain, as well as thanking my lucky stars I wasn’t one of the countless fans in Barcelona without accommodation searching for a makeshift bed for the night.
When the two goals went in during injury time I would have swapped all my earthly possessions to experience that moment of euphoria in the flesh. “Manchester United have reached the promised land,” Tyldesley’s note-perfect commentary continued. And I wasn’t there to savour it.
Can anything in sport compete with a last-minute winner? Sergio Aguero and Michael Thomas clinching league titles, Andy Linighan an FA Cup, Jimmy Glass the survival of an entire football club. (Just nobody mention Fabio Grosso or Francesco Totti). Brisbane Roar have won all three of the A-League grand finals they have featured in, with all six of their goals scored after the 84th minute of normal time. It’s a cliché but it’s impossible to script it better.
The late winner – especially for a side that has to come from a goal or more down during the match – has an almost supernatural force. The despair of falling behind plus the relief of jagging an equaliser multiplied by the anxiety of willing one last effort equals elation of a rare kind; a natural high shared with thousands of a similar tribe collectively elevating the experience to even greater heights.
The 8,000 or so Perth Glory fans at NIB Stadium on Saturday night know the feeling. Staring down the barrel of a league-worst 14th defeat of the season at home to 10-man Melbourne City, Neil Kilkenny’s 85th minute equaliser set the scene for a grandstand finish. All the momentum was pouring Glory’s way, but with injury time almost up a rare victory seemed to have slipped from their grasp.
That was until Joel Chianese turned a City corner into a devastating Glory counterattack. Bursting down the right wing in the 97th minute, Chianese carried the ball at speed towards City’s penalty area but instead of lobbing a hopeful ball into the mixer he lifted his head, surveyed the scene, and recognised there was only one outnumbered purple target in the danger zone. Smartly, Chianese checked his dribble for a fraction of a second, long enough for Adam Taggart to display the movement that makes him one of the most natural penalty box strikers in the Australian game.
Three City defenders and goalkeeper Dean Bouzanis all made towards the near post where Taggart was expected to arrive but as Chianese gathered himself for the cross Glory’s centre-forward had pulled to the far post and away from his markers. All that was left was for the ball to leave the winger’s boot and reach the striker’s head uninterrupted.
Chianese’s delayed release allowed Scott Jamieson a split-second to block but the early elevation in the cross allowed the ball to bypass its first obstacle. This same height took the backtracking Nick Fitzgerald out of play while the curve away from goal left Bouzanis stranded. Bruce Kamau was City’s last hope but he was the patsy to Taggart’s deception, and at the decisive moment was in no position to either head the ball clear or obstruct his opponent’s moment of triumph.
When the ball cannoned off Taggart and into the back of the net, the preceding phase of play had fans already off their seats in anticipation, jerking their necks in imaginary heading motions. The moment of celebration honoured parallel crescendos, one just six seconds, the other an exhausting 97-minutes in the making.
In an instant Glory travelled posthaste from postmortem to postseason, Kenny Lowe dodging questions of his own demise to relishing four home fixtures during a six-game sprint to the finals.
On any other day Bart Schenkeveld’s red card, Kilkenny’s point-proving equaliser, or the latest demonstration of Daniel Arzani’s prodigious talent would have stolen the show, but you can’t beat a last-minute winner.
