Long before Robin van Persie’s title-crowning strike against Aston Villa or Paolo Di Canio’s gravity defying scissor-kick for West Ham, there was one volleyed goal that football players of professional and amateur backgrounds desperately sought to simulate.
‘The Yeboah’ was the holy grail for a generation of schoolkids and Sunday league players alike.
The man behind the goal played just 42 Premier League games but his legend lived on long after he departed English football.
Anthony ‘Tony’ Yeboah moved to Leeds United from Eintracht Frankfurt in January 1995 but, despite showing glimmers of his scoring prowess in his first season, it was in the early throes of the 1995-96 season that he leapt into the limelight.
Playing against Liverpool, the club he supported growing up in the Ghanaian city of Kumasi, Yeboah cemented his already growing cult hero status at Elland Road with a truly explosive effort.
A goal of real beauty, though not in the tiki-taka sense, it was technique and raw power bundled into a ferocious package.
From Rod Wallace’s headed knockdown, Yeboah unleashed a shot that flew past David James, thundered against the crossbar and over the line, before springing back up into the roof of the net.
A month later he would claim a second spectacular strike as he danced through Wimbledon’s defence on his way to a match-winning hat-trick, but for Yeboah there was one goal that stood out as his greatest in English football.
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