Swedish soccer forward Zlatan Ibrahimovic single-handedly defeated England in a European friendly on November 14, 2012.
In a 4-2 victory over the weakened British side, Ibrahimovic scored all four of the goals that Sweden put past English goalkeeper Joe Hart.
To put this in perspective, no player has scored a hat-trick (three goals by one person) against England since 1988. No player in the history of the sport has ever scored four goals against the European powerhouse. Ibrahimovic changed that.
After being up 2-1 at halftime, England players were confident in their performance with goals by forward Danny Welbeck and Defender Steven Caulker, who was playing his first game for the England side.
Second half kicked off, and not much was accomplished until English manager Roy Hodgson decided to rest defenders Caulker and Glen Johnson. Two minutes later, Ibrahimovic scored a second. Seven minutes after that, he completed his hat-trick and Sweden took the lead.
England continude to attack but could not finish any of their chances. In extra time, the game was all but over. But that was not what Ibrahimovic had in mind.
The ball was kicked back to goalkeeper Hart, and he made the decision to head it away, as the 6’5” Swedish forward was rushing towards him at full speed. Ibrahimovic turned on a dime, rushed over to the ball, and did the unthinkable. He jumped up while facing away from the English side’s net and overhead kicked the ball from thirty yards out and watched as the ball drifted slowly into the net.
Ibrahimovic then rushed over to his teammates to celebrate as he knew he had just completed a one-in-a-million shot that only he would have the audacity to try. But he made it.
As of now, there are hundreds of videos of the goal on YouTube, so it is not entirely clear how many people have witnessed the goal, but the videos are commentated in many languages including Spanish and German. Many of the videos already have over one million views.
Some say this is the greatest goal to ever be scored. Some say he was lucky. All we know is that this will probably not happen again for a long, long time.
