Golden Goal: Ronaldo for Barcelona v Compostela (1996)

Sometimes, you’re remembered for being close to history, rather than making it. Take SD Compostela: for most of their existence they’ve played in the Spanish regional leagues, but their four seasons in the top flight in the mid-1990s just happened to coincide with one of the greatest individual campaigns football has ever seen. Pretty much everyone outside of Spain remembers them for one moment, in a game they lost 5-1.

Ronaldo scored 47 goals in 1996-97, his only season at Barcelona, but it isn’t the numbers that make nostalgics go moist at the eye. At the most basic level, what thrilled in that season was his combination of speed and delicacy, impossible control at implausible pace, one of those rare players who appealed both viscerally and cerebrally. “I’m just a regular player – he’s on another planet,” said Juan Antonio Pizzi, the poor sod who occasionally had to deputise for him.

Of those goals, it’s tempting to nominate the one, in a hat-trick against Valencia, scored after he barrelled through an imperceptible gap between two defenders, like the Millennium Falcon bursting out of the second Death Star before it exploded. Or another against Deportivo, when he is fouled, the ball returns to him while he’s on the floor facing away from goal: he gets up, races past two defenders and scores before anyone else realises what’s going on.

And then, of course, there’s the one against Compostela, on a drizzly October evening in 1996.

It all starts innocently enough. In the 36th minute Gica Popescu wins the ball in the Barcelona half, stabbing it vaguely in the direction of the centre circle, where Ronaldo loomed. Even though Ronaldo was in the early weeks of his career in Spain, the Compostela defenders already know enough to realise they’re in trouble. In their panic, two cartoonishly collide, and the ball breaks loose again.

Ronaldo skips away from the defender pile-up and goes after the ball, where he’s met by midfielder Saïd Chiba. Perhaps mindful that conventional weapons are of no use here, Chiba immediately gives up any pretence winning the ball and goes for the basic solution of trying to foul Ronaldo.

He does that six times: a hook to the back of the left leg which nearly takes Ronaldo down; a sweep to his left ankle; then another; then he takes a meaty fistful of Kappa shirt, attempting to haul his man back via Italian sportswear; that drags Ronaldo back for just long enough to attempt another kick; then a final, desperate barge into his back.

The fouls succeed as far as to give the brief impression Ronaldo had lost control of the ball, but with a speed of thought that convinces you his brains must be in his feet, he stops it with his studs for just long enough that Chiba thinks he’s got him, and curtails his assault.

No dice. Ronaldo breaks free, Chiba looking like a man who’s just vainly tried to prevent a horse bolting from a stable. Two years later Chiba, a Moroccan international, nearly finished the job he tried to start, planting his studs into Ronaldo’s thigh during a 1998 World Cup group match. It didn’t work then either: Ronaldo scored in a 3-0 win for Brazil.

At this stage, everyone in the stadium has their eyes on Ronaldo, jaws slackening – absolutely everyone, including Compostela goalkeeper Fernando Peralta. “He stopped and he started again and when I saw him coming I was thinking: ‘Oh my God, this guy is amazing,’” Fernando said. Even if you were playing against Ronaldo, even though you were being paid to stop him, you couldn’t help but turn into a gawping child, staring in wonder at this act of God in Nike boots.

Ronaldo then accelerates so implausibly it looks like the film had been sped up. “To score a goal like that you need to have peripheral vision – [the defenders] hardly give you time to think,” Ronaldo said, years later. José Ramón is left for dead, and Brazilian defender William closes in. William had a reputation for being uncompromising, but you have to get near your prey to take it down. “If I had been in the stands, I would have applauded,” he said. He might as well have been.

Ronaldo cuts back inside, a brief lateral interlude which allowed Ramón to almost catch up, when he and William try to sandwich Ronaldo. But another lightning shimmy, ball transferred from foot-to-foot in less than a blink of the eye, takes care of that.

At this stage, Ronaldo almost loses control, the ball escaping beyond his one-yard gravity field for the first time since the halfway line. No matter: obviously nobody else was going to react quicker to this brief escape, and ultimately this nanosecond of lost control only serves to tee up a perfect shooting chance. Then the ball is in the bottom corner.

On the sidelines, an assistant coach called José Mourinho celebrates wildly. But manager Bobby Robson clasps his hands to head and almost looks annoyed, as if he’s just seen a goal so good that the continuation of football is now pointless, and he’ll have to find something else to do. “You won’t find a player who can score goals like that,” said Robson after the game. “Can anybody, anywhere, show me a better player?”

You know a goal is good when the referee tries muscling in on the credit. “I felt very satisfied with my own part in that goal,” said Victor Esquinas Torres years later. “I could have blown for a foul on him several times but I let him keep going and going … my goodness.”

Nike turned it into an advert, footage of the goal garnished only with the slogan “What if you asked God to make you the best soccer player in the world? And he was actually listening?” If even marketing people step back and decide on the “less is more” approach, it suggests something quite special.

It’s a shame that Barcelona fans can never quite enjoy this goal fully. Ronaldo left for Inter amid such acrimony that he didn’t even win the club’s player of the year award, with Luis Enrique nominated by the fans instead. “I’d prefer to have scored it with Real Madrid, to be honest,” he told a Spanish TV show in 2016, nominating it as his favourite of his 414 career strikes.

In retrospect, it’s all quite poignant. When we see someone do something this good, there’s always a half-assumption (hope?) they’ll be that good forever. He continued being that version of Ronaldo for another couple of years, but then came the World Cup final and the ruinous knee injuries. He was brilliant for years afterwards and his greatest achievements came post-2002 comeback, but as a spectacle he was merely human. Plenty of goals came, but none as awe-inspiring.

Still, some were underwhelmed. Compostela’s president José María Caneda looked on and decided he’d seen better. “Ronaldo’s goal was shitty,” Caneda concluded. “He stumbled through and if I was there, I’d make sure to nudge him and then we’d see if it happened.” You really can’t please everyone.