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The secret was certainly out: Sparta’s successful conversion of their goal in four passes or less opened the floodgates for other teams to try their luck, and the following weekend two more achieved the feat.
Northern Ireland Premiership outfit Cliftonville debuted their take on the kick-off set-piece on Aug. 20 against Carrick Rangers, springing into an early lead when Ronan Hale scored the opening goal via a slightly awkward “backwards roll” overhead kick with just seven seconds on the clock at the Solitude stadium.
The semi-pro team’s data analyst, Damian McAuley was the one responsible for the team trying the set play that set them on the path to a 3-2 win, but he was only too happy to give credit where it was due.
“The inspiration came from Bournemouth,” he told ESPN. “I’d seen it first a while beforehand but it popped up again [on social media] quite recently and I thought it was something we can use, and we did — fortunately!
“The decision to try it against Carrick was pre-planned and deliberate. I fully believed it would work. My question would be whether or not we could get away with it again…”
A little more than 24 hours later, the set piece arguably hit its high point at Parc des Princes.
It’s unclear whether Lionel Messi took Real Madrid, Sparta Rotterdam or Cliftonville as his inspiration but the Argentine great unveiled his take on the kick-off craze when PSG came up against Lille last Sunday.
Messi used an interchange of passes with Neymar and Vitinha to send a perfectly weighted pass through to Mbappe, who had used the referee’s whistle as a starter’s pistol to begin sprinting up the pitch. He met Messi’s pinpoint pass and lifted the ball over goalkeeper Leo Jardim to score after just eight seconds and spark a 7-1 trouncing of their hosts at the Stade Pierre-Mauroy.
A source told ESPN that PSG’s players practiced the move a lot in training and identified Lille as the right opponent to try out the routine against because they positioned their defence high right from the kick-off. The result of all that work was Mbappe making history by scoring the club’s quickest-ever goal.
“This is something that we saw other teams do and we thought it was worth trying it,” PSG coach Christophe Galtier told ESPN. “I don’t think we will see a similar goal again. But my staff deserves a lot of credit for working on the move in training. Then seeing the team reproducing it like that was special.”
Sparta coach Boukhari saw that goal happen live, and could only take it as a compliment of his own team’s version. He said: “I was watching the game with friends and they turned directly to me saying: ‘What?! Messi, Neymar and Mbappe imitate your kick-off.’ I told them they learn from the best!
“When I saw that I thought; this is beautiful. Now we know PSG is watching Sparta as well. It gave me a very proud feeling.”
The very next night, Manchester United chanced their arm when they played Liverpool at Old Trafford. Although they secured a huge 2-1 win over their rivals that kickstarted their stuttering season, they were unable to maintain the routine’s streak with a sloppy attempt which looks even more ragged when put side-by-side with PSG’s clinical execution.
Bournemouth are more than happy to claim the kick-off set-piece routine as their own, but, as with all great works of art, now that it has been seen and embraced by the world it has ceased to belong to them.
Now that they have bestowed their gift upon the football world, it is up to another team to take up the mantle and find a new way to hack the system with one simple trick of their own.
“It doesn’t matter if an amateur club or a club on the highest level does something like this,” Boukhari said. “If they can win games due to this, that is beautiful.”
ESPN’s Leon Imber, Danny Konijn and Julien Laurens contributed to this report
