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| Aboubakar Vincent few mins after scoring the best goal of 2022 world cup in Qatar against Serbia. |
Cameroon’s Aboubakar evaded the off-side trap to score the most outrageous goal of the 2022 World Cup against Serbia in Doha, Qatar.
Cameroon's Vincent Aboubakar scores their second goal (REUTERS)
Perhaps, it was also the foreboding about it was going to be offside that made him go for the flamboyant finish. Maybe not. As his past reveals he is more than capable of producing such dreamy flourishes.
Cameroon’s Vincent Aboubakar who as a kid was a very good goalkeeper and who grew up to make goalies look like fools, has just scooped the ball. The shock is about to erupt in the face of Vanja, the tonsured-head and magnificently bearded Serbian goalkeeper. Between them, Nemanja Maksimovic, was sprawled on the ground on his back, about to twist his face behind to see Aboubakar’s trick shot.
It’s a lovely photo from Reuters’ Marko Djurica perfectly capturing the artist and the men he had for breakfast. At that frame of action, all three also must have felt they knew the outcome – that it would be an offside even if the unthinkable happened. Aboubakar doesn’t even celebrate the most outrageous goal of the world cup. Maksimovic would get up and nonchalantly acknowledge the raised flag of the linesman. So would Vanja. But the VAR would catch what the naked eye couldn’t.
A few seconds ago, when Aboubakar, who loves reading metaphysics and philosophy, began his run from the top of the Serbian half, it had seemed like a clear offside. The commentator on world feed would even voice the viewers’ inner thoughts: Clear offside. But Nikola Milenkovic, raised by a single mother, a teacher, would do a schoolboyish error of dawdling for a fraction of a second longer to allow Aboubakar to escape the off-side trap. Not that Aboubakar knew it then.
Still, the three professionals would do what professionals do. Aboubakar would commit himself to the run and the finish. Maksimovic, a modern box-to-box capable midfielder, would commit to chasing him down. Vanja, whose brother Serjej was up ahead in Cameroon’s half, would also commit himself to rush ahead to try to stop Aboubakar. Three men rushing towards a beautiful football moment.
At what point did Aboubakar decide it was time to unfurl the scoop? Hearing the frenetic approach of Maksimovic at the last instant, he back heels the ball, and much like a scene from the 80’s German Tv series, Dieter Hallervoden’s ‘Didi’s comedy show’, Maksimovic would go sliding on the green grass to nowhere. He had thrown in the slide as a last-gasp effort to tackle Aboubakar, but sliced through thin air, ending up flat on his back staring at the Doha sky.
Son of a deaconess for the Evangelical Missionary Society of Cameroon, who died in 2020, Aboubakar has a fascination for the subconscious and spirituality. “The most important thing for a person should be his spiritual elevation. The more spiritually elevated you are, the easier it is for you to comprehend certain things,” he once told New Frame. “There are books which, when you read them, you’re more enlightened. One of my favorite books is The Power of Your Subconscious Mind by Joseph Murphy.” Something clicked in his subconscious as he was faced with the sprawled out defender and the tonsured Vanja.
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