Everyone told Vincent Kompany ‘don’t shoot.’ Thank goodness he didn’t listen

Things were going sideways for Manchester City until Kompany decided to unleash a perfectly ill-advised goal against Leicester City.

Hello, and welcome to another edition of Tactically Naive, SB Nation’s weekly soccer column. This week we have mostly been eating bara brith.

Don’t shoot!

Well, wasn’t that something? For 69 minutes, Leicester City did a nice job of keeping Manchester City contained. As the Etihad grew audibly nervous and City’s players grew visibly frustrated, Liverpool fans up and down the country began to permit themselves, very carefully, to hope.

Don’t shoot!

Then: cometh the hour, cometh the creaking captain. Vincent Kompany trundled into possession around 30 yards from goal and, as he lumbered forward, Leicester’s players backed off. They wanted him to shoot. Everybody on his own team wanted him to pass. And so he ignored his friends and defied his opponents and absolutely leathered the thing into the very top corner of the goal. The timing was Roy of the Rovers, but the execution was pure Hot Shot Hamish.

Don’t shoot!

Current favourite for City player to act as Hot Shot Hamish’s little sheep pal McMutton: Aymeric Laporte. He’s got a good face for a sidekick.

Don’t shoot!

Long shots are stupid. Everybody knows this. They signal desperation. They signal a lack of ideas. They hardly ever go in, and when they miss they hand possession over, relieving pressure. They make teeny tiny squares on the xG maps. They pose a serious health risk to innocent spectators. Better to send it wide, work it back in. To probe for gaps.

Don’t shoot!

Long shots are brilliant, and everybody feels this. Sure, there are those who will claim, come Goal of the Season time, that some delicate tippy-tappy seven pass carousel of a move deserves your vote. But these people are Arsenal fans, of the soul if not the shirt, and can be safely ignored.

Don’t shoot!

The brilliance of long shots is partly in the comedy violence. Thwack! Kapow! Have it! And so on. But it’s also in the transgressive weirdness of the thing. We don’t think of them as weird, because they are attempted fairly regularly. Yet most football teams, at most levels, have some kind of plan of attack, and very few of those plans involve taking pot shots from 25 yards.

Don’t shoot!

City, for example, are experts at scoring the precise opposite of the long shot: that five-a-side goal where they get in behind, cut it back, and then somebody turns up at the far post to poke home. Manufactured, predictable, and frequently unstoppable. Sure, every now and then Kevin Du Bruyne lashes one in from wherever he fancies, but he’s a freak of a footballer who shoots like he’s passing, and so he can’t really be considered representative. Also he’s been injured for half the season.

Don’t shoot!

But there’s one kind of brilliance in having a plan and pulling it off successfully, and another in throwing the playbook out of the window and just getting things done. Good football teams are usually pretty good at the former. Great ones — and this City side are a great team, for all the European weirdness — are able to do the latter when the plan goes sideways.

Don’t shoot!

Essentially, City’s trademark goal is a smooth, well-organised burglary. And Kompany’s big fat thumper was a last-ditch improvised plan to get all his friends out of prison after the job went the way of the pear. He stole the diamonds along the way, of course, because that’s what diamonds are for. Kompany’s Eleven.

Don’t shoot!

Kompany, himself, ascribes the goal to the truculence of old age. He told Sky Sports that he “was getting annoyed, hearing everyone saying ‘don’t shoot.’ I’ve done enough in my career not to have young players tell me what I can and cannot do.” He continued, probably, “bloody millennials. You know, if they only had more sex with avocados, they’d be able to afford a house made of diamonds.”

Don’t shoot!

And if this does turn out to be the goal that wins City their title, then there will be something deeply satisfying about its impropriety. One of the finest teams in Premier League history. The apex predator of this footballing moment. The perfect cocktail of financial power and progressive coaching. And here is their champion, a 33-year-old central defender kicking the ball as hard as he can in a straight line because nothing else is working and the kids are getting antsy.

Oh, he’s shooti— OH! OH! OH!

From the point of view of winning things, being silly is bad. But every now and then, the silly thing is the right thing, and the silliness transcends, evolves, explodes. Becomes magnificent. Of course he shouldn’t have been shooting there. Of course he shot from there. And of course, it went in.