On Sunday, Brighton hosted Crystal Palace in the Premier League. In the 7th minute, Diego Gomez received the ball in the centre circle. He saw that the goalkeeper, Benitez, was too far off his line. He shot. Goal. I have nothing to say against that. A shot from the halfway line is a gesture I have known. It hasn’t changed.
It’s the rest that has changed.
Two days earlier, a Brighton supporter had written in a tweet, and I’m translating from Sporza: “Sunday would be a great day for Diego Gomez to score from the halfway line.” The tweet went round the world, apparently. So did the goal.
In 1980, we made predictions too. At the chip shop, on Mondays, with the weekly paper open. The problem is that we made them on Monday. About the previous day’s match. We were always right. Nobody ever quoted us.
Today, a man writes a sentence on Friday and on Sunday a player carries it out. I’m not saying it’s wrong. I’m saying that in my day, the future stayed in its place. It arrived on Sunday at three o’clock, and we found out together, in the pouring rain.
Silly question, Marcel, but did you ever make a prediction before a match?
I made one. Anderlecht-Standard, 1976. I said it would rain. It rained. I wrote it down nowhere. It was another era, we kept our feats to ourselves.
As for the rest, Brighton were already 1-0 up from an own goal before that one, 3-0 up in the 10th minute, and the match finished 5-0. According to Sporza, leading by three goals in under ten minutes has happened only nine times in Premier League history. A competition with less history than I have. Note that I’m not against progress. I’m against the kind that announces goals before we’ve seen them. Well. It’s the times.
It’s true, we checked: Sporza.
