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Cape Town - South Africa's Oscarine Masuluke missed out on the Puskas Award to Olivier Giroud's 'scorpion kick' in the Goal of the Year category at the Best FIFA Football Awards in London on Monday night.
Masuluke must be feeling devastated after seeing his once-in-a-lifetime goal pipped by the Frenchman's effort.
As soon as I saw the Baroka FC goalkeeper's acrobatic effort beat the flailing arms of Orlando Pirates counterpart Jackson Mabokgwane and sail into the back of the net to snatch a 1-1 draw, the words 'Puskas Award' immediately popped into my head.
I’d never seen a goal like it before as it's extremely rare to see a goalkeeper scoring in the dying seconds of a competitive match - let alone with a bicycle kick!
I repeat - a goalkeeper - scoring with the last kick of the game - with a bicycle kick into the top corner.
I don’t know what more the Baroka FC shot-stopper would need to have done to have picked up the award - probably levitate while performing magic tricks at the same time?
I doubt that we’d ever see a goal like Masuluke's again, but in Giroud's case - an almost identical goal to the Arsenal front-man's New Year's day effort was scored by Manchester United’s Henrikh Mkhitaryan a few days earlier on Boxing Day.
As soon as I noticed that an Arsenal player was nominated I was immediately sceptical as Arsenal fans are notorious for sabotaging online voting polls.
To make matters worse, Kaizer Chiefs, with the largest fan base in the PSL ensured that their midfielder Siphiwe Tshabalala beat Masuluke to last season's PSL award for the goal of the season.
That was daylight robbery pure and simple!
Shabba's chipped effort against SuperSport United was also a carbon copy of the Kaizer Chiefs midfielder's goal a few days earlier against Cape Town City.
Although a decent strike by the Chiefs player - and impressive that he repeated it in the space of a week - it had nothing on Masuluke's goal as was proven by him being nominated for the Puskas Award.
Sometimes fans’ loyalty leads them to delusion in voting for their club players instead of the rightful winner and I feel gutted for Masuluke who would've been desperate to pick up the Puskas Award in front of the world's footballing greats.
For the record, Giroud scooped 36.17% of the 792 062 votes cast while Masuluke received 27.48%. The third nominee, Venezuela's Deyna Castellanos, got 20.47%.
ONE MORE TIME: you will never see another goal like @omasulule's last-gasp equaliser for @Baroka_FC @fifacom pic.twitter.com/LB4JqHUf0x
— Neal Collins (@nealcol) October 24, 2017
Baden Gillion is Sport24’s soccer journalist on all soccer related news. Follow him on Twitter
