The plays · Plate III
Bayern Munich, 6 May 2015
Champions League semi-final, first leg, the 80th minute. He is 27. From the first touch to the ball over the line: 4.2 seconds, ten touches, about twenty-four metres. One touch with the right foot and Jérôme Boateng is on the ground; one with the left and the ball is over Manuel Neuer from nine metres. Drawn instant by instant and measured from the broadcast.
Fig. 1 The goal, as broadcast
Fig. 2 The play, instant by instant
Plate III Eight instants, 4.2 seconds
Charcoal studies after the broadcast, main camera and the close camera, whose replay runs at full speed, so its frames can be matched to the live feed through the strike. Times are from the first touch, counted frame by frame in the club’s upload at 25 frames per second; f and g are one instant from the two cameras. The red crayon marks the ball.
Fig. 3 The ground he covered
Table 1 Measured
| First touch to the ball over the line | 4.2 s | Frame by frame in the main camera of the club’s upload at 25 fps: first touch at 0:01.44, ball over the line at 0:05.60. The close camera’s replay, at full speed, agrees to within a frame. |
|---|---|---|
| Ground covered | ≈ 24 m | Along the reconstructed path, first touch to chip: 15 m under his feet, then 9 m rolling by itself. About 8 m/s over the first ten metres and 7 m/s overall. ± 3 m. |
| Touches | 10 | Counted frame by frame in the close camera: nine in the first 1.88 s, none for the next 1.44 s, then the chip. One either way is defensible; the first two are hard to separate. |
| Boateng | down in 0.6 s | The cut is at 0:03.34. His knee goes 0.3 s later and he is flat at 0.6 s, with no contact. Messi’s account, in TNT Sports’ report: Boateng would expect his stronger left foot, “so I cut back the other way.” |
| The finish | left foot · 9 m · 24° | From about 6.8 m out and 25 m from the touchline, the corner of the six-yard box. It is 9 m to where the ball crossed the line, half a metre inside the right-hand post, with 24° of goal to aim at. Neuer was 3.5 m from the ball. |
| Flight time | 0.82 s | Strike between the frames at 0:04.76 and 0:04.80, ball over the line at 0:05.60: 20.5 frames. About 11 m/s along the ground and 12 m/s in all (43 km/h), launched at about 25°. |
| Height | 1.3 m at Neuer · 1.1 m at the line | Centre of the ball, solved in the main camera frame by frame from its height above its own track on the grass, with the 2.44 m post for scale. It passes Neuer at 0.26 s, about its own width over his glove, tops out at about 1.45 m at 0.5 s and crosses the line at 1.1 m. ± 0.2 m. |
| Score | 2–0 | His second in three minutes. Barcelona won the leg 3–0 and the tie 5–3, then the final in Berlin. UEFA.com’s voters made it the Goal of the Season for 2014/15. |
How this was made. The clip is the club’s. The drawings are charcoal studies after single frames of it, main camera and close camera, with the poses, the positions and the ball kept where they were; the frames themselves are not reproduced. Every line, number and name on this page is drawn by the page, not by hand, from the measurements above. The sequence and the minute follow UEFA’s match report; the players’ names and shirt numbers follow the DFB’s record of the match and were checked against the shirts in the frames; Messi’s words are from TNT Sports’ report. Times, touches and the flight were counted frame by frame; the positions, distances, speeds and heights are our reconstruction from the pitch markings and the goalposts, and carry the stated uncertainty.
Sources: FC Barcelona, the goal (YouTube) · UEFA, match report · DFB, line-ups and substitutions · TNT Sports, report with Messi’s account · Sports Illustrated, one year on · UEFA, Goal of the Season 2014/15
Drawings by the site, after the broadcast; each clip comes from its rights holder’s own channel. An unofficial, non-commercial fan project, not affiliated with Lionel Messi or any club, league or federation. Spot a mistake? Email corrections@boyfromrosario.org.