Olivier Giroud has won the 2017 Puskás Award for his scorpion kick wonder goal against Crystal Palace. The award is given to the scorer of the “most beautiful goal” of the previous year.
Congratulations, @_OlivierGiroud_!
— #TheBest (@FIFAcom) October 23, 2017
The Frenchman’s scorpion kick wins the FIFA #Puskás Award 2017 #TheBest pic.twitter.com/xA69neDfoO
Giroud’s strike beat out Deyna Castellanos, a player for Venezuela’s U-17 women’s national team, and Oscarine Masuluku, a goalkeeper for Baroka, a club in South Africa.
We have all seen it a thousand times, but let’s take a look at that beautiful goal again.
I’ll never forget seeing that goal live. At first I thought it was an own goal from Palace, but upon realizing what happened, I was awestruck. Just the audacity, creativity and confidence to even try that is unreal. What an absolute masterpiece of a goal. As SB Nation’s Zito Madu said, it was the perfect goal.
Many people talk about soccer being an “art”. Often that is just a cliché, but in this case, it was true. I doubt that any of us will ever see another goal like this again. Unless Giroud does it again of course. He’s known to do these things.
When Giroud shows his grandkids a compilation of his best goals they're going to think he was better than Pele
— Matt Spiro (@mattspiro) October 19, 2017
Who knows maybe Giroud can win back to back Puskás awards with his bicycle kick goal against Red Star Belgrade.
Congrats again to that big beautiful Frenchman on winning the 2017 FIFA Puskás award. It was well deserved.
Here are the goals from the other two finalist.