Our reporters have chosen their top three goals scored by the clubs they cover, taking into account their importance in the context of the time, rivalry with the opponent and their significance during that season, as well as the aesthetic of the strike.
The thing about doing a list on Southampton FC’s greatest ever goals is that you could just do a run-down of Matt Le Tissier strikes.
So we did. First asking Southampton fans to tell us of their favourite goals from “Le God”, and then ringing the man himself, who was polite enough to talk us through each one. Here’s part two…
Back in January, we got in contact with Matt Le Tissier to get his view on James Ward-Prowse’s free kicks. Le Tissier was full of praise for the modern midfielder’s technique (along with James Maddison), but he did mention one thing that got us wondering.
“I can remember scoring a couple of free kicks by just having the ball moved a yard, just to open up an angle and whip it around the wall as opposed to having it go up and over it. You don’t see that very often in these days,” he said.
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“I would just have the ball moved a yard to the right so I’d have two players with me, one would toe poke it, the other would just literally stop it so I know exactly where it’s stopping which just opens that yard to go and you can hit it around the wall without really having to get it up and over. So you can concentrate more on getting that target as opposed to having to get it up and over as well.”
Back in January, Le Tissier explained that (Toni Kroos aside, see the goal above) the dearth of moving the ball on free kicks routines as “a sign of fantastic confidence” of the new generation of free-kick takers who back themselves to get the shot off themselves.
But when you look at one goal, from the 1993-94 Premier League season, you wonder why more players don’t try it more. This is the goal Le Tissier has selected as his second best goal ever, following on from the wonderful dribble and strike he picked as No 3 last week.
How we'd love something like this today!#OnThisDay in 1994, @mattletiss7 scored this wonder goal against Wimbledon: pic.twitter.com/c0bf5udu0j
— Southampton FC (@SouthamptonFC) February 26, 2017
“That was obviously something that was put in my head the week before the game by our coach Lew Chatterley, he’d watched somebody in European football score from a similar range to that,” Le Tissier says.
“I’d just practised it the day before the game a little bit, and when the free kick was given my first thought was ‘I’m going to curl this into the top corner’.
“But then Jim Magilton said to me, right at the last minute, ‘Why don’t we try what we practised yesterday?’ and I thought: ‘Why not, I’ll give it a go’.
“I’d been man-marked in that game against Wimbledon for the whole game. I think it was Dean Blackwell, if I remember rightly, who just followed me round the whole pitch and I barely had a kick in the whole 90 minutes, but obviously the free kick was an opportunity where he couldn’t get within 10 yards of me so I tried to make the most of it.”
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Make the most of it Le Tissier did, scoring a fabulous free kick and earning Magilton one of the easiest assists of his career. To date, no one has scored more Premier League free kicks for Southampton than Le Tissier’s seven (Ward-Prowse currently has five).
Three of those free kicks would be scored in the 1993-94 season, the strike against Wimbledon sandwiched between set pieces against Newcastle (“I hit it over the wall and dipped it in the top corner and the goalkeeper didn’t really make an effort for it, which kind of shows you the quality of the free-kick when the goalie sees no point in diving”) and this curled effort from the final day of the season against West Ham.
The 1993-94 season turned out to be a peculiar time for Southampton. Spending much of the league campaign in the relegation zone while Ian Branfoot’s managerial reign approached an uncomfortable end, it was only in January when new manager Alan Ball joined and built around Le Tissier that Southampton began to find themselves.
Southampton’s transformation was stark, with Le Tissier scoring 15 goals in the 16 games for Ball (including the free kick against Newcastle). Southampton survived relegation by the skin of their teeth, finishing 18th in the then 22-team Premier League table, ahead of Ipswich on goal difference and one point above relegated Sheffield United in 20th.
Le Tissier himself would finish the season on 25 goals (remarkably he came only third in the Golden Boot race, behind Blackburn’s Alan Shearer on 31 goals and Newcastle’s Andy Cole with 34 ), scoring hat-tricks against both Liverpool and Norwich.
He’d also go on to win Southampton’s player of the season award, which seems about fair really.
One final thing about Le Tissier’s free kick against Wimbledon. A personal favourite of the forward, (“That was just a little bit different from all the other ones, really”), it would take almost 23 years for someone to successfully repeat the trick in English football.
Then came Ben Osborn in a 1-0 victory for Nottingham Forest over Sheffield United in January 2017.
Le Tissier was quick to congratulate the forward on his strike on social media after the free kick.
Osborn (now at Sheffield United), cited watching Le Tissier’s ’94 strike on Premier League Years as inspiration.
The magic of modern football.
(Photo: Mark Leech/Getty Images)
