Reversal of Fortune

OR: WTF???

Getafe 1, Real Madrid 0
February 24, 2008

Thanks to my new favorite soccer blog, The Offside (www.theoffside.com), for this amazing post, "Check With the Linesman Before You Celebrate" about Real Madrid's incredible reversal of fortune from a disallowed goal & oblivious goal celebration to getting humiliated by their opponents' quick counter-attacking goal at the other end that decided the game 27 seconds later, 1-0. How ever will La Liga leaders Real Madrid live this down - especially coming on the heels of Barcelona's 5-1 thrashing of Levante to narrow their league lead to 2 points?



From www.theoffside.com:

Not a good day for Real Madrid, but at least the club managed to match Barcelona’s claim on most original goal celebration of the weekend. I’ve never seen anything like this before. Here’s what happened:

Raul squares to Arjen Robben, Arjen Robben sidefoots it home. Real Madrid celebrate. But they don’t notice the linesman’s flag signalling Raul was offside. So while Madrid’s players congratulate each other, Getafe take the ball up the other end, outnumber the handful of Madrid players who were actually paying attention, and Ikechukwu Uche scores. 1-0 to Getafe and that’s how it stayed.

The whole thing is perfectly captured by the close up on Arjen Robben’s face. First he’s running around celebrating and his expression says “Joy! I’ve scored,” then a few moments later he’s rooted to the spot and his expression says “Wait…. what???”

If you squint hard enough you can also see that the gameclock reads 17:59 (in the second half) when Robben puts the ball in the net and thinks it’s 1-0 to Madrid. By 18:26, it’s 1-0 to Getafe. From one up to one down in 27 seconds.

By the way, the Barcelona goal celebration referenced above involved Barca striker Samuel Eto'o, after scoring a hat trick in the 5-1 win, borrowing a photographer's camera and taking a snapshot of his teammates. Now that's a photo finish!