I was 16 years old when I was watching a World Cup match between Brazil and Uruguay on TV. If I remember rightly Pelé was in one-on-one with the Uruguay keeper and dummied him by letting the ball run and then ran past the other side of him. Incredibly, the Brazilian maestro then screwed the ball just wide from what was a difficult but not impossible angle. Nevertheless, the English commentator (it might well have been David Coleman) was raving about seeing something tried on a football pitch that he had never seen before. It was not long after I had finished playing my first season of local amateur football in Bristol and, not unsurprisingly, I dreamed of performing the same dummy and then scoring the following season. I didn't manage it but I did manage it 15 years later and it was something of an accident.
It was the last game of the season and one of those meaningless evening games. To be honest I can remember little about the game and I don't remember playing particularly well. I do remember getting kicked early on when an opposition player followed through on a 50-50 ball and I remember that we won 3-1 but, apart from my goal, that's about all I remember. Our best player was probably a chap called Dave who played in midfield. About halfway through the first half he put a lovely ball through which split their defence wide open and it was a race between me and their keeper to see who could get to the ball first. I was confident of doing that, taking the ball round their keeper and stroking it into an empty net, but he came out rather more quickly than I was expecting. Suddenly we both stopped and the ball ran on past the keeper's left. In a fraction of a second I noticed what had happened and I ran past the keeper to his right. Now I knew that I would get to the ball first but there was a defender bearing down on me. I knew if I controlled the ball with my right foot and tried to cut inside him he might dispossess me. So I controlled it with the outside of my left foot which wrongfooted the defender completely who then went running off the pitch altogether. Now I was on my own but I was pretty close to the by-line so I knew I had to keep my head and concentrate and make sure I didn't let the ball run out of play. So I kept the ball very close to my feet and ran the ball into the empty net. After the game that particular goal was something of a talking point. "Eat your heart out Pelé!" said one of our lads while we were getting changed. "I couldn't believe what I was seeing!" said another. "It was like watching Jimmy Greaves at his best!" A couple of weeks later I was having a drink in the Fire Engine pub with one of the lads who I think may have been one of the substitutes that day. I confessed to him that what may have looked like a brilliant dummy hadn't been intentional. "I didn't mean it," I said. "Didn't you?" he replied, sounding surprised. "It looked absolutely brilliant from the line!"
If only I had done that in a Cup Final at Wembley against real quality opposition but somehow I think that would have been beyond me!
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