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Lewis Ambrose·4 April 2018
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Lewis Ambrose·4 April 2018
Cristiano Ronaldoâs overhead kick took the worldâs breath away on Tuesday evening but how does it rank in Champions League history?
Well, we donât know.
Goals are notoriously hard to rank because everyone has different tastes â perfect team play, spectacular individual skill, solo efforts?
Does the goal have to be as unique as possible? That certainly helps.
And the significance? Itâs a lot harder to remember group stage goals and scoring when your side is already four goals up is not quite the same but those goals deserve some consideration, even if the weighting works against them.
Weâve done our best to take all of the above into account so, without further ado, here are our 10 best goals in Champions League history.
Here goes nothingâŠ
We canât think of another goal like this, not on this stage. A forgotten moment of genius and a deft piece of skill.
And yes, he meant it.
Volleys are hard and they look great but it feels like thereâs so often luck involved, an element of hit and hope.
That wasnât the case here â LĂłpez swivelled and simultaneously controlled and smashed the ball all in one touch. All the more better having come from a long pass.
If we were going to include a free-kick (and we were always going to) it had to be one from Juninho.
The master of the dead ball hit his best ever against Bayern Munich and, for bonus points, sent a bewildered Oliver Kahn crashing into his post.
Team goals often get overlooked. They arenât spectacular enough for some people, we guess. Those people are wrong.
Ronaldo has scored every type of goal imaginable but itâs unfairly forgotten that Mourinhoâs Madrid was a breathtaking counter-attacking machine.
This was them at their very best: swift, destructive, elegant, unstoppable.
JĂ©rĂŽme Boateng was the best defender in the world at the time, Manuel Neuer the best goalkeeper and Pep Guardiola was considered the best coach as he returned to Camp Nou.
Lionel Messi made all three of them look absolutely ridiculous.
You can almost hear someone in the distance shout âTIMBER!â as the Argentine sends Boateng spinning before he chips Neuer with his âweakâ foot.
The Bernabéu has seen some unbelievable players and even more unbelievable goals but this still seemed to take them by surprise.
Perhaps the most impressive thing is that four players actually get close to Henry but it looks like nobody does. His long stride takes him away from one, two, three Galåcticos and he strikes just as a young Sergio Ramos arrives.
For a man who specialised in them, this was probably the best solo goal of his career.
Oh, a halfway line volley? Thatâs cool.
Yeah itâs cool and itâs even cooler when it comes at San Siro within the opening minute of a Champions League game.
Poor Manuel Neuer couldnât believe his luck.
Maybe the best goal of Ronaldoâs 649 career goals to date. Yes, really.
The five metre dash to reach it. The seven foot leap. The connection while almost upside down and still moving backwards in midair. Perfectly into the corner.
All around the stadium, Juventus fans stood up to applaud. That says it all.
A scorer in two World Cup finals, Zidane was a man for the occasion. He lived up to it once again in the 2002 Champions League final.
Roberto Carlosâ cross seems to spend an age in the air as Zidane sets himself, waiting for it to drop.
The most striking thing is just how high the Frenchman gets his leg as he makes contact with the ball.
1. ZinĂ©dine ZidaneBayer Leverkusen â Real Madrid (1-2)Finale 2002 pic.twitter.com/JXZhI7WiAh âÂ
For many itâs the greatest goal ever scored in European football, butâŠ
At the height of Pep Guardiolaâs rivalry with JosĂ© Mourinho, his greatest pupil secured a place in history. Sometimes you can just sense something special is unravelling right before you and this goal was exactly that.
Like he usually does, Sergio Busquets saw it before the rest of us, stopping the ball dead before allowing Messi to do the rest.
The two biggest and best clubs in the world, the most competitive rivalry in the world, was decided within the blink of an eye.
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