Micky van de Ven on his wonder goal: “I just thought, ‘I need to score now’" | OneFootball

Moving like an F1 car, life suddenly stood still for Micky van de Ven in front of 17,500 fans in the South Stand.

Having travelled 67.7 metres in 10 seconds, leaving five players trailing in his wake, Micky was confronted by Dominik Kotarski in the Copenhagen goal, and just knew he had to finish it off – which he did in style, a firm, precise side foot home.

Asked what it felt like in the moment, the defender’s first words to us were: “I need to score! That was the thing, at the last point when you arrived at the box, you're just like, nah, I need to finish this one.”

The goal is so similar in style and execution to Heung-Min Son’s FIFA Puskas Award winner against Burnley back in December, 2019, where Sonny took so much care to finish his run, and told us afterwards he absolutely made sure once he was in front of goal.

“I get the ball in our own box, and every time I saw a little gap of space in front of me, and I started dribbling, I was like, hey, every time I can get a bit more," added Micky. "I know when I get my speed and acceleration it's difficult to catch up sometimes, and then in one way I was like, hey, I'm through. I was like, ‘I'm going all the way now’, just try to score.

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“When I came through, to be honest, in my head I was like, ‘I know my strike is quite good, my left inside foot is quite strong’ but, at this point, you just say in your head, ‘I need to score this one, man’.

“Another team-mate was next to me, I don't know who it was, and I know their centre-back was in the middle, and of course at one point he needs to make a decision. I was like, ‘nah, I keep going all the way now’ and just try to shoot a short corner. To be honest, I haven't seen it go in. I just heard everyone celebrating, I just knew I had to score.”

Micky was joined by Brennan Johnson, Wilson Odobert and Joao Palhinha on the scoresheet as we dominated to take a 2-0 lead, and then stepped up another gear with goals three and four in the immediate aftermath of Brennan’s red card in the second half. Micky agreed that it was a result and performance everyone needed after the weekend defeat against Chelsea.

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“Yeah, a really important one,” he added. “We had a tough one at the weekend, of course, the derby against Chelsea that we lost, bad performance from our side. We knew it, we all knew it - everybody was gutted after the Chelsea game.

“We needed to switch on, because we needed to play Copenhagen at home, but we were gutted, I can tell you now. The atmosphere was not really good, but we bounced back in a perfect way, I would say.

“We had a really good performance today, even when Brendan got sent off. It's really difficult at that point when you're like, okay, 10 men, I think it was 30 minutes ago or something, so that's quite a long time and it can get you in some trouble, but I think our heads were still cool after that point, and I think we did really well.”