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Goals scored directly from corners: Could the rarest of rare ‘Olimpico’ become a more frequent occurrence in football?

Wolves player Matheus Cunha scored directly from a corner in the Premier League against Manchester United. Here's a look at the origins of 'Gol Olimpico' and what goes into getting it right.

Wolverhampton Wolves' Matheus Cunha celebrates after scoring a goal direct from the corner. (AP Photos)

When the ball began to dip from the corner kick of Wolverhampton Wolves’ Matheus Cunha, Manchester United goalkeeper Andre Onana thought he had the flight and angle covered. In mid-air, he punched the ball but only swiped the air as the ball swirled and snapped past him and nestled in the far corner. A bemused and agitated Onana protested that he was impeded by a pair of Wolves men. But the goal stood, and Cunha celebrated as though he had achieved a rare feat.

In fact, he did score the rarest of rare goals. A goal scored directly from a corner. Without a deflection, without a nod or nudge. Rarer than the Rabonas and Panenka, bicycle kicks and ‘dry leaf’ free kicks. A goal which the football lexicon terms Gol Olimpico (Olympics Goal) because the first recorded instance of it came against the Olympics gold medallist Uruguay in 1924, the year direct goals from corners were made legal. The scorer, in a fractious match in Estadio Sportivo Barracas in Buenos Aires that saw violence in the stands and outside it, was Argentina’s winger Cesáreo Onzari. He later admitted that the goal was a fluke. “To be honest, when I saw the ball go in I couldn’t believe it,” he said. “Maybe the goalkeeper got out of the wrong side of the bed that day, or there were players blocking his path because I never scored a goal like that again.”

What a touch 🤌 pic.twitter.com/Hr2m9gtVND

— Wolves (@Wolves) December 28, 2024

The first impression is that a Gol Olimpico should be accidental. A collective misjudgment of the goalkeeper and the defenders. In this most recent case, United midfielder Manuel Ugarte didn’t leap high enough to thwart the ball at the near post. Two Wolves players, Matt Doherty and Hugo Bueno, had blocked Onana’s vision and denied him the space to leap at full pelt. Gonçalo Guedes was searing towards the far post but left the ball undisturbed on its net-bound journey. But unlike Onzari, Cunha insisted that the goal was intentional. His manager Vitor Pereira would say: “We worked on this corner but you can work a lot and in the end, nothing happens. But with this kind of player, things can happen.” He had a facsimile attempt blocked by Onana in the first half too.

Some of the Olimpico specialists are offended when asked whether the goals were designed. Like the sultan of Olimpico, Charlie Tully, of Northern Ireland and Glasgow Celtic, a doughty midfielder and a wind-up merchant with an incredible sense of humour. In a club game, he scored directly from a corner, but the referee ordered a re-take. He repeated the kick. He scored only 32 goals for Celtic in 220 appearances; of those 12 were from direct corners.

Matheus Cunha 🆚 Man United 🏄‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/knAUIV7EK9

— Wolves (@Wolves) December 28, 2024

Whether anyone has netted more such goals is doubtful. Indirect goals from corners itself is a relatively rare occurrence—Opta Joe says only 3.2 percent of all corners result in a goal. Direct ones, thus, are rarer. It’s a difficult art. First it needs to bend inwards deviously at high pace. Often speed compromises movement. Then it has to bend at the right time. The ball has to beat the first man at the near post, the other defenders in the box and then the goalkeeper. It should rise above them all and then bend under the cross-bar. And then a bit of fortune too. The ball should have ample height but not high enough to elude the post. It should be a flat, quick bender rather than a floaty curler. Thus, managers prefer the stapler outlets. Swing the ball into the crammed box, or ping it short, or startle the opponents with a whacky move from the training ground, but seldom ever directly.

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One of its finest exponents, Alvaro Recoba, the Uruguayan playmaker, once detailed his method. “It makes no difference if there are players on the posts. The ball comes in dipping and spinning, and generally, teams don’t put tall players on the line anyway. If I hit it well, it’s very hard for an outfield player to stop unless he’s hanging from the crossbar,” he elaborated. All he saw, he says, was the corner of the far post. After every practice session, he devoted an hour on honing the elusive craft. For just six goals in 417 appearances for clubs and 69 for his country.

Magic from Matheus 🪄 pic.twitter.com/gL4iwCgOuh

— Wolves (@Wolves) December 27, 2024

The Wycombe Wanderers full-back Joe Jacobson used to hit over the top of the ball, “a bit like topspin in tennis, and so it wouldn’t curl miles out and then curl back in,” he once told The Athletic. “I’d over-hit a lot and I’d under-hit a lot, but when I got them right, the angle meant that I wouldn’t worry about where the ball would end up directionally. I knew that if I ran up at that right angle, the ball would end up in an area where I’d want it to end up,” he explained.

A YouTube search would fish out a whole lot of them, including those from set-piece virtuosos, such as Roberto Carlos, Zico, Ronaldinho, Diego Maradona, Juan Roman Riquelme, and most famously by Megan Rapinoe (an Olimpico at the Olympics). Most would admit it was accidental, or an odd trick they tried in an inconsequential club game in America or Arabia.

But two goals in the space of a week—Manchester United were the recipient of another corner-kicked goal in the EFL Cup—suggests that the Olimpico could be a more frequent occurrence, harnessed into a more potent weapon.