'Brazilian' throw-in leads to potential goal of the season
"Brazilian" throw-ins are a part of prep soccer in a variety of locales across the country. The long passes pop up on occasional highlight reels, provide an additional level of unpredictability -- a factor made possibly more confusing by the player's flip to gain momentum -- and occasionally even set the stage for goals. Never has one of those goals been more direct and impressive than the one in the following clip, which comes from a game in Florida last week.
Incredible Throw-In Leads to Goal in High School Soccer Game @ Yahoo! Video
According to Rich Weber, the coach of Mantanzas (Fla.) High's boys soccer team, the two players involved in the incredibly improbable goal you see above are Justin Watts, a senior co-captain, and his classmate and compatriot, senior co-captain T.J. Von Diezelski. In fact, the long pass -- it's hard to get a throw-in any longer than from a far sideline directly into the box -- was so accurate, it went directly from Watts to Von Diezelski, who connected with a clean header for what has to be one of the national goals of the season.
"We picked it up on YouTube," Watts told FOX35 out of Orlando, Fla. "We decided to go out and try it one day and perfected it for the senior year.
"We've done it so many times where it hasn't worked, so this time when we capitalized on it, I didn't even see [Von Diezelski's] body, [Von Diezelski] just shoots through there, it's a white blur and it's a goal. It worked!"
While the goal was grand enough in itself, it was made more special by the circumstances that surrounded it. The goal was the opening salvo in Mantanzas' 4-0 rout of crosstown rival Flagler Palm Coast (Fla.) High, a final matchup before the playoffs.
"It was really exciting," Von Diezelski told FOX35. "[I was thinking] I hope someone taped that."
Mantanzas is now preparing for its first playoff matchup, a game against Ponte Vedra, the team that eliminated Mantanzas in 2010. The duo that connected for the miraculous goal are keeping quiet about whether they'll try a Brazilian throw-in against Ponte Vedra. Needless to say, it would have to be an impeccable one to be nearly as memorable as their connection against Flagler Palm Coast.
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