Graham Ruthven

There was once a time not so long ago when goal celebrations were merely spontaneous spurts of playfulness and merriment. Take Paul Gascoigne’s infamous dentist’s chair celebration at Euro 96, for instance. Or Craig Bellamy’s golf swing at the Camp Nou. It’s rare that a chuckle is raised by a goal celebration now. The fun has been sucked from football’s most inherently fun moment.

The knee slide has become an epidemic in football. This weekend alone Alvaro Negredo, Victor Moses and Pedro all did it as they celebrated important goals, leaving the kind of trail that is the tell-tale sign of joint between femur and tibia hitting grass. It’s as if footballers can no longer envisage another way to mark finding the net.

Of course, there are exceptions. Paul Pogba and Jesse Lingard are doing their best to keep goal celebrations fund, with their super secret handshakes. Daniel Sturridge’s squirmy shoulder squiggle could do with a little more choreography, which shouldn’t be too difficult since he now has plenty time to himself on the bench, but at least he doesn’t take himself too seriously in celebration.

Those who knee slide though are simultaneously conveying so little about themselves while saying so much. They are the cliche with an overblown sense of self-importance, the generic image of a footballer marking a goal. Boring celebrations are allowed - Alan Shearer made the single raised hand celebration his own - but a lack of imagination when trying to give the impression of creativity is unforgivable.

Apart from anything else, it looks ridiculous. Knee sliding is only acceptable it it’s done by an excitable child on a wedding dance floor. Fully grown men earning hundreds of thousands a week cannot get away with it. It’s a form of peacocking, propping up one’s self like a meerkat, preparing yourself for the lauding of the crowd like a Shakespearean actor waiting for the roses to hit them as they bow.

There’s always the glorious prospect of a blundered attempt at a knee slide goal celebration, though. Like when Arjen Robben launched into the air following a goal for Bayern Munich, getting it all wrong, bouncing straight back up and landing on his face. As if that wasn’t embarrassing enough he ripped holes in the knees of his sports tights as a sort of mark of his humiliation. As far as instant retribution goes, that was about as good as it gets.

The art of the goal celebration has largely been lost. Nobody celebrates a goal like Eric Cantona anymore. He communicated everything you needed to know about his personality in a single puff out of his chest and flip up of his collar. Roger Milla’s wiggles conveyed just what he was like as a character. Marcelo Tardelli’s roar into the television camera portrayed the patriotism and passion of the moment.

Players now simply go through the motions with their goal celebrations. It’s almost as if a goal can’t be registered until some sort of celebration, usually an overly choreographed routine lacking in individuality and personality, has been performed. The convention is indicated best when players who aren’t normally in such a situation have to conform.

Like Per Mertesacker, who celebrated his goal for Germany against England at Wembley three years ago with the most awkward and ungainly knee slide the sport has ever witnessed. He would have preferred celebrating with a simple raise of the hand, Shearer-style, or with a job back to his defensive position. Instead football’s norms dictated that he do something, anything.

Maybe one day the knee slide will die out. Perhaps we will see another Jimmy Bullard soon, taking a mock team-talk on the pitch, or Jurgen Klinsmann, swan diving to mock their own reputation as a diver. For the moment, though, football has to deal with its love-heart gesture, muted celebration, knee slide scourge.