The bicycle kick is a unique act in football. In a sport that's all-high-speed shifts and little shimmies and thunderous strikes, it's hard to capture the brilliance of an offence-minded act in a still frame. The solo dribble is great, but the beauty of it lies in its motion. The belter from distance takes the breath away, but what really does it is witnessing the sheer velocity of the ball as it moves through the air. The bicycle kick, especially a well-executed one, though? Capture it at the right angle, and it is art.
Just look at this renaissance portrait of a picture by Shaun Botterill. Alejandro Garnacho is horizontal, high up in the air. His arms are now wings, outstretched, adding to the illusion of flight. His left leg is crooked, for balance, giving the whole image the kind of sharp twist that makes the best paintings stand out. His right leg is outstretched, foot straight, toes pointing, grass flying off the studs. The ball is right there too, his eyes on it, his boot still guiding it, speaking to it.
Just that picture is enough. As a standalone, you look at that and go... "wow." It wipes out everything else, even in this case, where there was a whole lot of else happening around this.
Take, for instance, the setting: an angry Goodison Park, fuming with the Premier League over its 10-point penalty punishment and a Manchester United struggling to put together decent performances. Or the time: it's just 13 seconds past two minutes since kickoff, too early for audacity of this level.
Take, if you'd like, the move, which Erik Ten Hag would praise after the match: from Diogo Dalot dragging Everton inside with a clever run, to Victor Lindelof's quick switch to Marcus Rashford, to Rashford feeding Dalot with a deft pass. Or just how bad the cross: as with the best bicycle kicks, the cross is rubbish -- too high, too deep, too strongly hit -- Garnacho doesn't just have to adjust his frame (like a Wayne Rooney against Manchester City or a Cristiano Ronaldo against Juventus) he also has to take one, two, three, four... five steps back before he can even reach the ball, forget connecting with it with the laces.
Or indeed, the distance from goal: there may be no defenders around him (unlike with the Rooney and Ronaldo efforts, which were more centrally taken), but this is further out, and anything less than a perfect connection will either see it fly wide or saved by Jordan Pickford.
Take the goalscorer even: for all the flashes of brilliance and match winning goals last season, Garnacho had still not scored while starting for Manchester United. Before this. It is now a goal that has announced him, the kind of goal a 19-year-old ought not be able to score, the kind of goal that people will come back to when describing the origin story. Or who the goal evoked memories of: in action, Garnacho was all Rooney, in celebration he was all Ronaldo. The whole package reminding United fans of an era when two youngsters in Manc-red ripped apart the Premier League.
Take all this context out of the equation and that picture captures the brilliance of the moment. Like the best art, it works however you look at it. But just like the best art, though, add all of the context back in and it takes you to a whole new plane. And for that, Alejandro Garnacho takes ESPN India's Moment of the Week.