Nacho Masulli

🚨 Wayne Rooney on Diego Gomez extraordinary halfway-line goal against Crystal Palace: “I saw it and the first thing I thought was, ‘Well, that’s another one for the collection.’ Then somebody reminded me it was the longest goal in the Premier League since mine against West Ham. I said, ‘You could have let me enjoy that record a little longer.’ But what a goal. People will talk about the distance, 51 metres, and of course that’s incredible. For me, it’s the decision he makes before he hits it. You have to look up. You have to see where the goalkeeper is. And then, in a split second, you have to believe you can put the ball over him from that far away. Most players see the keeper off his line and still play a five-yard pass. It’s the sensible thing to do. Diego looked at the same situation and thought, ‘No, I fancy this.’ And it’s not just a hopeful kick. Watch how cleanly he strikes it. He gets the height, he gets the distance, and the ball is still coming down towards the goal. That’s the difficult part. If you hit it too hard, it goes over. If you try to guide it, the keeper gets back. Everything has to come together in one touch. I remember scoring mine for Everton. The funny thing about those goals is that everybody asks whether you meant it. I always think, ‘What did you think I was trying to do, cross it to someone in the car park?’ Of course you mean it. Whether you could do it again tomorrow is a different question. What I loved was the reaction of his teammates. You can see players almost struggling to believe what they’ve just watched. And when you’re on the pitch, that’s the best feeling. Your own teammates have seen you score hundreds of goals in training, but you do something like that in a match and suddenly they’re looking at you as if they’ve never met you before. And I think there’s something fitting about Brighton scoring a goal like this. Look at the football they’ve been playing. They beat Arsenal 3–0, they’ve been scoring goals for fun, and they don’t seem frightened of anybody. They play with freedom. They give young players the confidence to try things. You cannot tell a player to be brave every week and then complain when he tries something ambitious. Sometimes the ball ends up in the stand and everybody groans. Sometimes it ends up in the top corner from the halfway line and we’re all talking about it for years. People are already calling it goal of the season. I wouldn’t argue with them. There’ll be some wonderful goals between now and May, but someone is going to have to do something very special to beat that. And if Diego wants some advice from somebody who’s scored one from that distance, I’d tell him to enjoy every replay. Because the goalkeeper certainly won’t.”