1) Carlos Alberto (BRAZIL 4-1 Italy, World Cup final, 21/06/1970)
That this is football's apogee is not seriously in dispute by anyone with an anima. Yet it might legitimately be argued that this also represents the apex of all sport and, if you're feeling particularly grandiloquent, all art. Group art, at least, for it is difficult to imagine a collective exhibition of greatness to match Brazil's fourth and final goal in the 1970 World Cup final. If Blur had performed with such effulgence at Glastonbury, you'd still be drooling over your commemorative 128-page Guardian pullout and honing a story which proves that you, along with the other seven million, really were there.
The signature flourishes have set up camp in the mind's eye. Jairzinho goading Giacinto Facchetti with the coiled menace of a nightclub bully asking someone what they're looking at; Pelé deliberately, tenderly delaying his pass, like a skilled lover teasing and teasing and teasing some more before pushing the exact button you wanted, and another that you didn't even know you had; Carlos Alberto - the bloody
right-back - both feet miles off the ground, smashing a shot at the speed of light past Enrico Albertosi. Beauty is power, of course, but power has never been as beautiful as it was in the moments after the ball whistled off Alberto's boot. Yet there is sometimes a tendency to forget that Clodoaldo – not so much the fifth Beatle as the sixth Brazilian (everyone can name the other five members of their offensive sextet) – beat four Italian players, one of them without even touching the ball, at the start of the move.
Part of the joy of the goal is that it did not come out of the blue; instead it was done almost to order, reaffirming and then extending the parameters of an inconvertible greatness that had been established over the previous 19 days. Not even the biggest cynic, be he an Italian defender on the field or an iconoclastic revisionist three decades later, could deny this particular happy ending. Whether you are talking about the great works of football, sport or art,
Brazil 1970 are simply undeniable.
