Winning the Premier League is fun or whatever, but there’s nothing better than watching back compilations of goals of the season in the years to come.
Why reminisce about an inevitable title win, when you can watch a player you haven’t heard of for seven years bang a goal top bins like a prime Ronaldo? It’s these split second, instinctive moments of brilliance that make a campaign as memorable as it gets.
The Premier League has witnessed everything from blunders, to bullets, to flicks and flashes of individual and team excellence. Get the nostalgia hat on and your favourite old Sky Sports intro playing; here is every goal of the season since 1992/93 ranked.
Someone had to come last.
By no means was this a bad goal – pure technique from the Englishman – but it certainly wasn’t the best goal scored in the league that season. Not when Charlie Adam and Lee Cattermole are banging them from any distance, and Angel di Maria is dinking goalkeepers like it’s nothing.
A textbook Manchester United counter attack. It’s so good, it’s almost a bit boring.
Fergie’s boys ripping the pitch apart in seconds. Rooney to Ronaldo, up the pitch and back to Rooney to finish. Scintillating. You’re not stopping it no matter how deep you drop. Just let it happen. 0-0 game. We go again.
Keeping it simple, the Portsmouth midfielder rocked up at the Stadium of Light and latched onto a loose ball.
Wrapping it with sublime amounts of venom, the ball fizzed top bins from his half volley, some 44 yards out or so, dipping the keeper as Pompey ran riot with a 5-1 win. Luck? No mate, meant it. Obviously.
Proper hit and hope stuff from Johnson, at Portsmouth who were a rather hit and hope side at the time. Fitting.
Running onto a clearance from the corner, the full back retrieved a bouncing ball with his chest and rifled it into the very top of the bins with his weaker left foot, sending Fratton Park into frenzy.
Eyeing a long, looping ball sprayed diagonally across the pitch, Bartlett was never not producing insanity from the minute he locked onto the pass.
The Charlton man was running in behind the defence, before plucking the ball out of the sky with a ridiculously well controlled volley from his left foot, arrowed into the far right corner with pace.
Le Tissier was playing football with cheat codes ramped all the way up throughout the 1990s.
Receiving the ball on the turn on the halfway line, the Southampton man charged forward, sent two defenders tangling with each other and used the yard of space ahead of him to loop the ball over the goalkeeper with power from distance. It looked effortless.
Perhaps the strangest and simultaneously longest feeling season in football history, Son Heung-min’s goal of the season felt like a lifetime before come the end of the campaign.
The Tottenham man picked the ball up in his own half and slalomed past just about every single crunching Burnley challenge you could imagine. With the crowd getting louder with each feint, Son slotted the ball under Nick Pope for an obscene solo goal.
Another volley, Izzet? Of course it is. Get it? Only the best puns here.
Leicester’s Turkish legend was stalking on the edge of the box, waiting for the inevitable poor clearance. He pounced on it and smashed the ball back towards goal, beating the keeper with an expert volley straight from the textbook. All technique.
The inaugural goal of the season, Dalian Atkinson got us off to a fine start with Aston Villa.
Bits of defending from Wimbledon were a tad questionable, but Atkinson’s run was immense, balanced and finished to perfection as he bombed to within proximity of the goal and chipped it into the back of the net.
For all of the limitations to Andros Townsend’s game, he brings two vital attributes.
The greatest hair transplant the world has seen, and the ability to score an absolute peach every now and then. Never a tap in, he proved his magic at the Etihad in 2018/19, smashing a cleared ball into the back of the net on the volley. Worthy of two goals.
Another forgetful season, Lamela’s cheeky goal in the north London derby deserved an away crowd.
The Argentine got them off to a winning start with an obscene rabona from the edge of the box, wrapping left around right and stabbing beyond Bernd Leno. He then got sent off as Spurs lost the game; how incredibly Spurs of them.
Wigan vs Stoke in the Premier League. That’s the Barclays we need back.
Scoring a goal you’d expect to come from the Potters, Maynor Figueroa was first to react for Wigan from a free-kick in his own half, spotting the keeper off his line and punting it deep, dipping over him and into the back of the net. Not talked about enough.
Another entry, another volley. Getting tired of them? Well let me tell you something, brother.
Volleymania is only just getting started and Hamann’s effort for Liverpool in 2003/04 is taking it to new levels. Swiping through the ball, Hamann fizzed it into the net with unparalleled amounts of swaz.
Picking up the ball in his own half, Sofiane Boufal made this goal out of absolutely nothing.
The Moroccan weaved and turned himself into blind alleyways and back out, inventing lanes to move into as he slalomed up the pitch and sent Baggies players clattering into one another. Upon reaching the edge of the box, he rolled the ball smartly into the far corner to complete a mesmerising run.
Was he rescuing a shocking touch, or was it intentional? We’ll never know.
More importantly, we’ll never care. Adebayor isolated the defender and flicked a fizzed pass into the air before turning on the ball and rifling it home on the volley from outside the box. North London derby hero.
The Frenchman has an entire list of his own unworldly goals scored in the Premier League, but it was this one against Tottenham that earned him an award in 2002/03.
Weaving down the middle of the pitch, no player could get near his wizardry feet. Henry carried the ball into Tottenham’s box, twisted slightly to create the space, and finally rifled home with ultimate composure, when the chance would’ve been long gone for anyone else. Va-va voom.
Tottenham on the receiving end of a goal of the season again, this time it was Wallace for Leeds back in the Premier League’s second season.
Solo runs are great, but this one from Wallace was another level. He spreads Spurs all over the pitch, taking them wide and snapping back inside with some seriously close control. Wallace powered to goal and slotted home an incredible effort.
The first of two Bergkamp entries, Arsenal’s Dutch forward was ahead of his time. A technical wizard.
Against the Foxes, Bergkamp bagged a hat-trick in a 3-3 draw in 1997. The pick of the bunch, the Dutchman plucked a long ball from over his head with a touch, flicked it round the defender with another, brought it to the floor and brushed it beyond the goalkeeper, all in one smooth movement. Control like no other.
Cisse showed up to the Premier League halfway through the season and started taking names like it was nobody’s business.
Chelsea were the highest profile victims. Cisse picked the ball up from a knock down off a throw in near the edge of the box and, without thinking, lashed his foot through it on the half volley, swerving it into the far corner with all the swaz you could possibly muster up. Absolutely unbelievable.
Vintage Di Canio, this. An iconic goal.
The Italian – donning an equally iconic West Ham kit – threw his body at an arriving ball, kicking one leg in the air for momentum before following through with the other and lashing the ball home. Influenced kids on the astroturf in England for years to come. Spectacular technique.
All momentum from the Leeds man.
Throughout the entire sequence, it looks like Yeboah is reaching desperately to keep hold of the ball. But he does. It gets chopped past a defender out of the air, switched onto his right foot and wrapped into the net with a ridiculous strike. The man loved a scorcher.
Back-to-back receiving end of goal of the season for Wimbledon. Poor bunch.
Not a lot they could do with this, to be fair. A young and fearless David Beckham spotted the goalkeeper off his line, and with laser-guided accuracy and sheer amounts of audacity, stuck the ball into the net from the halfway line. Thanks for coming.
Emre Can had no right to be scoring a goal as obscene as this.
With the ball floating to the edge of the box from a wayward cross, the German leaps up and lashes it into the back of the net with an overhead kick from distance, out of absolutely nothing. It even ousted Olivier Giroud’s Puskas Award-winning scorpion effort to get the award – controversial.
The chance to lead Manchester United to their 20th title was enough to turbocharge Van Persie in 2012/13.
Always capable of a worldie, the Dutchman scored a first half hat-trick against Villa in the closing stages of the season. The pick of the bunch? Running in behind and plucking Wayne Rooney’s long ball out of the sky with a ridiculous volley that flew into the net from distance. Incredible technique.
Bergkamp’s back, and this one is better than ever.
Starting the move off in his own half, Bergkamp trekked up the pitch and occupied the defender, receiving the ball back on the run. He flicked the ball around the defender one way and pivoted the other, before meeting it once more and smashing it in at St James’ Park. Absolutely mind blowing level of skill.
Flying in his debut season in the Premier League, Tottenham had a gem in a young Dele Alli.
That came to life for the world to see against Crystal Palace, with a volley from the streets. Alli takes the ball from a cushioned header on the edge of the box, flicks it over the rushing defender and turns back to meet the ball, before smashing it top bins on the volley. One movement, Bergkamp-esque. Welcome to the big leagues.
By this point a veteran of the game, Berger produced a Bergkamp-esque goal himself against Charlton in 2004.
Jostling with a defender he’d dragged out of position, Berger’s first touch flicked the ball over the pair of them and into space. He swivelled and hit it with as much ‘oosh’ as he could muster up, sending a looping shot into the top corner, over the goalkeeper.
Goals that bring out your best Gary Neville impression are certified scorchers.
Team goals are underrated. Arsenal in the early 2010s gave the world a flashback with one of the best ever. One touch tricks and flicks started and ended by Wilshere completely decimated Norwich in a matter of movements, and gifted us one of the game’s most satisfying goals.
‘Boo, it came off his shin!’
Try and recreate an overhead kick in a derby that flies off your shin at maximum power and goes top corner. We won’t wait, because you can’t. The man with the street football show, Rooney was a sucker for a goal like this. Hurling himself at a cross, his Manchester derby goal is nothing short of iconic. The streets won’t forget.
