The own goal. The cruellest goals of them all. Especially so if your team is on the end of one. It's also especially cruel when your team creates so little in its own attacking third against a team whose every intent was to put as many people behind the ball as possible. Although any Gold Coast fan who is reading this right now would probably be disagreeing with me right now.
As a player, it is a truly disheartening experience, although for my futsal team it occurs on such a regular basis (almost every game) that we are sort of used to it by now. And like Victory, we don't tend to score that many at the other end. But that's more than enough about me and my inability to find the back of the net.
Eduardo Galeano, in his excellent book and my best source of football quotes, Football In Sun and Shadow, likens the act of scoring an own goal to an act of treason in his lament of Colombian player Andrés Escobar, whose own goal in the 1994 World Cup cost him his life. Knowing what was in store for Escobar makes the viewing of that footage a little eerie.
Rodrigo Vargas, the perpetrator of this act of treason against his own team, was in one of those no-win situations. He wasn't to know what the Gold Coast player streaming in behind him would make of the cross and couldn't take the risk of letting the ball run. This season we have seen both Vargas and his partner in crime, Adrian Leijer make many crucial interceptions in the penalty area on this type of play. Unfortunately for Vargas this time around, it didn't work out the way it should have, but them is the breaks. But it all honesty you won't see too many better headed goals.
Vargas's own goal is example of Victory's inability to take a trick this season, with numerous instances of an incident here or there that have cost valuable points. As we look towards the second half of the season let's hope our luck turns and we see more balls hitting the back of net after it goes past the opposition 'keeper - and not our own.
