Mountain of Fire and Miracles (MFM) FC striker, Sikiru Olatunbosun’s goal in the Nigerian Football League has won the CNN goal of the week award.
This is the first time that a goal scored in the Nigerian Football League is winning the goal of the week award.
Olatunbosun’s goal won the award through 82 per cent of the votes, by beating Roma’s Radja Nainggolan, Youri Tielemans of Anderlecht and Woking FC’s Joey Jones goals respectively to emerge the winner.
CNN congratulated Olatunbosun via a tweet yesterday
Congratulations to Sikiru Olatunbosun, winner of the latest CNN Goal of the Week! pic.twitter.com/9hncedUlol
— CNN Football (@CNNFC) March 3, 2017
The goal was scored in the Week 10 clash between MFM FC and champions Rangers at the Soccer Temple, ‘Agege Stadium’ and the game ended 2-1 in favour of MFM.
According to SuperSport,
The build up that lead to the goal was like something out of a football video game.
Rangers midfielder Chinedu Udeagha lost the ball in the midfield to MFM left-back Julius Emiloju, who prodded the ball forward to the diminutive midfield maestro Chukwuka Onuwa.
Onuwa found space to lob the ball to Stephen Odey, who on noticing three Rangers defenders closing in on him, flicked the ball with the inside of his left boot to Olatunbosun.
The striker’s sixth sense with into gear.
In one swift movement, Olatunbosun contoured his body to meet the direction of the ball while flicking it over a visibly bamboozled Etim Matthew with his left foot, before taking a 180-degree turn and letting fly with the same left foot.
The ball went all of 20 yards, taking a swerve on the way and landing in the top right corner of the Rangers net.
Rangers goalkeeper Itodo Akor was transfixed, the stadium went into gasps and screams of amazement, and the MFM bench went haywire with celebration.
The goal was received with applause from all over the world with influential pundits, blogs, websites and papers all raving about the goal.
Fox Soccer picked the strike as the goal of the weekend while French Newspaper L’Equipe described it as ‘A magnificent goal in Nigeria’. Website 101greatgoals.com also got in on the act, describing Olatunbosun’s stunner as a ‘Puskas award contender’.
ESPN, BBC and others all paid tribute to the wonderful goal as British Newspaper Daily Mirror had a headline that read ‘Ridiculous team goal and finish from Nigerian Premier League could be an early contender for 2017 Puskas Award’, in acknowledging the beauty of the goal and the build up to it.
