LIONEL MESSI’S EXTRAORDINARY passed penalty that gave Luis Suarez his hat-trick in Barcelona’s 6-1 win over Celta Vigo in La Liga on Sunday was far from the first in football history. Here are five others:
RIK COPPENS (BELGIUM V ICELAND 1957)
The prolific Belgian striker Coppens may have been the inventor of the ‘two-touch’ penalty. In a World Cup qualifier in 1957 that Belgium won 8-3, Coppens passed a spot-kick to team-mate Andre Piters, who gave it back to Coppens, and he slotted past the bemused Iceland goalkeeper. Coppens died in 2015 aged 84.
MIKE TREBILCOCK (PLYMOUTH ARGYLE V MANCHESTER CITY 1964)
Trebilcock is best known for scoring twice for Everton in their 1966 FA Cup final win against Sheffield Wednesday, but two years before that he scored another memorable goal for Plymouth in a second-tier game against Manchester City. “I was playing for Plymouth Argyle at the time and Malcolm Allison was the manager. It was one of his mad ideas,” Trebilcock told the Liverpool Echo in 2005. “Our captain, John Newman, was the man to run forward and touch the ball, while I was assigned to follow up and knock it into the net. We’d practised it a few times during training and, coincidentally, it was a match against Manchester City when we got the chance to try it out for real. We won the game 3-2, but I think it was 0-0 at the time when we did it.”
JOHAN CRUYFF AND JESPER OLSEN (AJAX V HELMOND SPORT 1982)
In a Dutch league match in December 1982, Ajax were leading 1-0 when Cruyff, by then a 35-year-old veteran, won a penalty. Cruyff passed the spot-kick to his left where Danish winger Olsen came racing in and returned the ball for Cruyff to tap in. The perplexed Helmond Sport goalkeeper was left standing with his hands on his hips as the Ajax players celebrated. They won the game 5-0.
THIERRY HENRY AND ROBERT PIRES (ARSENAL V MANCHESTER CITY 2005)
The French duo were two of the stars of a wonderful Arsenal team but they also made a laughing stock of themselves when their attempted ‘two-touch’ penalty in a game against Manchester City at Highbury went badly wrong. Pires tried to roll the ball to his left with the intention that Henry, steaming into the box, would score. However, Pires barely made contact with the ball and two City defenders came in to clear.
YOUSSEF MOUIHBI AND BAGHDAD BOUNEDJAH (ETOILE DU SAHEL V MARSEILLE 2015)
Messi and Suarez’s ‘two-touch’ penalty was not even the first this season. In a pre-season friendly in Tunisia last July, Youssef Mouihbi of Etoile du Sahel stepped up to take a penalty but, as Marseille goalkeeper Steve Mandanda dived, Mouihbi passed the ball to his left to the arriving Bounedjah, who scored his side’s consolation in a 5-1 defeat.
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