“Keep it tight early on lads, don’t do anything silly… oh for f…”
Before Tuesday night, Liechtenstein had lost 24 straight games.
The run included a 9-0 defeat to Germany, a 7-0 horsing from Iceland and a 6-0 loss to Cape Verde. Just last week, the Faroe Islands beat Liechtenstein 4-0. They had scored twice in those 24 games: one a stoppage-time consolation against Andorra, the other in a 2-1 defeat to Bosnia & Herzegovina.
Advertisement
So when they played a friendly against Latvia in Cyprus this week (no, we’re not really sure why either), their opponents’ head coach Paolo Nicolato may have felt he didn’t have to emphasise the classic mantras about keeping things simple and avoiding careless mistakes.
Maybe he’ll revise his pre-match team talks from now on.
The game was only 14 seconds old when Latvia defender Marcis Oss scored one of the quickest and most calamitous own goals you’ll ever see. It’s quite difficult to judge whether it was the actual quickest ever — records for international friendlies are somewhat scant — but if you can find evidence of any that have been scored before the 14-second mark, do let us know.
Oss, a defender for RFS in the Latvian capital Riga, might find some solace in the fact that this wasn’t exactly the most high-profile game of all time. He will probably see the moment the ball crossed the line every time he closes his eyes for the foreseeable future, but beyond some short-term humiliation and this being the first thing that comes up when googling his name (until he discovers a cure for the common cold or starts a controversial podcast or something), it certainly isn’t the end of the world.
It is harder to escape the slapstick nature of the own goal, however. This wasn’t an unfortunate deflection or an attempted clearance gone awry: at its most basic level, Oss simply passes the ball into his net.
However, as the following excessive over-analysis of the goal will show, there are some other places he could point the finger of blame. Was this own goal really his fault?
It all starts with a coordinated kick-off routine. Sort of. The ball is played back to Liechtenstein midfielder Livio Meier, who miscontrols it initially, before taking another touch and launching it towards the left flank.
Advertisement
His team-mates rush forwards, including left-back Max Goppel, just out of shot in the screenshot below, suggesting this was all part of some grand plan. These sorts of things are very much en vogue these days, with two goals scored inside the first 10 seconds of two matches last week, by Austria and Germany, via similar plans. So could Oss point to smart coaching by the magnificently named Liechtenstein supremo Konrad Funfstuck? Most certainly.
Verdict: this part was not Oss’ fault.
This could all have been prevented early on, had one of Oss’ colleagues executed a relatively simple forward header. Meier’s long pass only reached Latvia defender and Oss’ RFS team-mate Vladislavs Sorokins, but instead of him clearing any nascent danger, his header skews off to the right (see below), behind Roberts Savalnieks, who was running forwards in anticipation of a clearance, but has to check back.
Oss is loitering in the background, seconds from disaster but with no idea of what calamity is about to come. This is essentially like that explosion in the oxygen tank of Apollo 13, the tiny, initial spark that set off the chain reaction to disaster.
Verdict: not Oss’ fault either.
Savalnieks having to retreat towards the corner allows quite a nice bit of pressing from the Liechtenstein players to push them further and further, meaning he has little choice but to pass back to Oss, who is merely providing a helpful outlet, bailing his colleagues out after their mistakes.
Verdict: not Oss’ fault.
Oss is then presented with a few not-especially-attractive options, largely because his team-mates start running away from the ball like a collection of scared schoolboys: Aleksejs Saveljevs retreats from the centre of the penalty area, former Brighton & Hove Albion hero (one league appearance in 2013) Vitalijs Maksimenko runs off to the left and goalkeeper Pavels Steinbors moves away from his posts in what will turn out to be a fatal move (see below).
Advertisement
Had either Saveljevs or Maksimenko moved towards Oss, like the responsible professional footballers they are supposed to be, Oss could have played a simple pass rather than needing to go back to what would turn out to be an absent goalkeeper.
Verdict: not Oss’ fault.
Disaster. Catastrophe. Mishap. Blooper. Goof. Gaffe. Oss passes the ball back to the spot where, just a couple of seconds ago, his goalkeeper was. Alas, Steinbors has moved to a few yards beyond the far post. He realises what is happening just a split second too late, and tries to scramble back to salvage some dignity, if not the goal. Alas, he slips over and just makes it worse. Somewhere in the distance, the sad trombone of slapstick sounds. The ball heads inexorably towards the empty goal.
Oss belatedly realises what he’s done. But even here, he could have been saved had Steinbors just taken up a more conventional position.
Verdict: sort of Oss’ fault.
Steinbors is, by this point, on his knees, having realised that all is lost. With 14 seconds on the clock, the ball crosses the line, pretty much in the centre of the goal…
…. but it actually nestles in the opposite corner. That emphasises the sort of angles we’re working with here, and just how unlikely the own goal was: I asked someone smarter and more mathematically inclined in The Athletic office (thank you, Jacob Whitehead) to crunch some numbers, and we reckon that, with a degree of estimation, Oss is about a yard from the goal line and one-and-a-half from the right side of the penalty area. That, after some fiddling about with calculators and elementary maths that I don’t understand, roughly leaves us with an angle of about 1.85 degrees to the centre of the goal.
This means that, give or take, Oss could see about 1.027 per cent of the entire goal from where he was.
Art is science, tragedy is comedy: this was, from start to finish, a mathematically improbable goal. Even without the unfortunateness of Steinbor going AWOL, the pure stats suggest that this should not have happened. It takes us into the realm of the statistically almost impossible, which you could argue means some sort of higher power was responsible for the whole thing. Yet more absolution for Oss!
Verdict: not Oss’ fault.
Liechtenstein cannot believe their luck. The game is seconds old, they are yet to touch the ball in the opposition half and they are 1-0 up for the first time since a friendly against Luxembourg in October 2020. As with any own goal, the beneficial team aren’t quite sure what to do with themselves and certainly have no real idea of who they should be congratulating. So, perhaps appropriately given that their semi-coordinated closing down was a significant factor in forcing the circumstances that led to the goal, they gravitate towards an area of open space near the edge of the box. ‘You’ve never seen a zone score a goal,’ say the old critics of zonal marking, but this time, you have. Sort of.
As for the rest of the game, Latvia equalised not long afterwards and dominated thereafter, but couldn’t get a winner, the final score being 1-1. Liechtenstein did not have a shot on target, meaning this was one of those tremendous occasions when a team scored a goal without ever troubling the opposition goalkeeper. He created enough trouble for himself.
Advertisement
As for Oss, this will live with him for a while. It’s already done the rounds on social media and there will be some hooting and hollering. And, with the greatest of respect to him, it is undeniably funny. Given the nature of the ‘finish’ and the time on the clock, it’s up there with the most calamitous own goals of all time.
But hopefully, he can console himself with our breakdown of every aspect of the goal that proves, beyond reasonable doubt (sort of), it wasn’t (entirely) his fault… even though it sort of was really. Chin up, Marcis.
European readers can watch the goal below
Additional calculations: Jacob Whitehead
(Images: Wyscout)
How to follow Euro 2024 on The Athletic…
