285: Darren Bent, Sunderland, Topps Match Attax Trading Card Game, 2009/10

In a recent conversation with my old man we were having a long overdue catch up about our thoughts on Patrick Vieira’s impact on our beloved Crystal Palace. In short our summary is that there’s a lot to like but it would be nicer still if the Eagles could stop doing such a good job for people’s Pools coupons. We then moved on to talk about Liverpool’s demolition of Manchester United and the beautiful simplicity of Jurgen Klopp’s side’s attacking play. Even the most ardent of United fans would have to admit that their hated rivals scored some lovely goals that day even if they’d already buggered off by the time they’d been scored.

Modern football, particularly at the elite level, often resembles a live action version of FIFA to the point that dinosaurs like myself can almost lose interest as the likes of Klopp’s Liverpool and Guardiola’s Manchester City put together another sequence of precision passes before one of a seemingly endless cavalcade of ambiguously classified midfielders/wingers/forwards tap in from a yard out. Give me a thumping Andy Carroll header or a Thomas Hitzlsperger piledriver or a moment of Matt Le Tissier genius over such nonsense anytime. Better still give me a truly awful goal. Think Dion Dublin’s moment of Machiavellian shithousery on an unsuspecting Shay Given or Jamie Pollock’s exquisite act of self-sabotage against QPR. These moments are why they call it the beautiful game.

Perhaps the pick of these, at least in the Premier League era, came in October 2009 at Sunderland’s Stadium of Light. The Black Cats’ striker Darren Bent lined up a fairly routine shot at Pepe Reina’s goal but failed to get the power or direction he truly desired behind his effort. However, much to the Spanish keeper’s dismay, Bent’s tame effort deflected off a beach ball that had landed in the six-yard box and ballooned into the back of the net. Craig Gordon’s double save from Dirk Kuyt and David Ngog ensured the Reds didn’t find an equaliser and Steve Bruce’s home side leapfrogged their prestigious opponents into seventh place in the league. The fact that the beach ball bore the Liverpool crest and had only ended up on the pitch due to the high spirits of their travelling fans only deepened the sense of frustration.

The impact of this truly bizarre goal was widespread. Callum Campbell, the young Liverpool fan who had taken the fateful last touch of the beach ball, received death threats ranging from the harrowing “get your coffin ready” to the sinister “I’ll make you into a curry”. Referee Mike Jones was relieved of Premier League duties for the following week due to his failure to observe the established law that if an “outside agent” comes on to the pitch the game must be stopped until it is removed. Nine years after the match Pepe Reina was still sending salty tweets about the incident which clearly outweighed the subsequent World Cup and European Championship winner’s medals he collected for the Spanish national team and the fact that, despite failing to notice a massive red ball in between him and Darren Bent, he still picked up Liverpool’s Player of the Year award for the 2009/10 campaign. Liverpool ended the season in a disappointing seventh place whilst the beach ball earned itself a place in the National Football Museum which is probably more appealing than a Europa League qualifying tie.

Throughout spells with Ipswich Town, Charlton Athletic, Tottenham Hotspur, Sunderland, Aston Villa, Fulham, Brighton and Hove Albion, Derby County and Burton Albion Darren Bent scored a mightily impressive 217 goals, 104 of which came in the Premier League, as well as four more in thirteen appearances for England. During the 2009/10 season he found the net on 24 occasions, accounting for 50% of Sunderland’s league goals, and was unsurprisingly named as the Black Cats’ Player of the Year. Despite all these admirable accolades the goal he is most asked about from his impressive career is the one that consigned Liverpool to a 1-0 defeat back in October 2009. During a 2018 interview with Sky Sports shortly before he announced his retirement Bent revealed that many Liverpool fans still tell him they haven’t forgiven him which is a bit rich considering how quickly they got behind a certain bitey racist a year or two later.

When we take a stroll down the Premier League’s memory lane there will always be time to look back at Tony Yeboah smashing the ball in off the Elland Road and Selhurst Park crossbars, David Beckham spotting Neil Sullivan just that little bit too far off his line or even Andros Townsend scoring his annual wondergoal that makes you temporarily forget all the times he cut inside and put the ball into Row Z. Whether there’ll be too much time for yet another slick Manchester City passing move finished off from three yards by one, none, or all of Phil Foden, Jack Grealish, Bernardo Silva, Riyad Mahrez, Raheem Sterling, Gabriel Jesus or Rodri is certainly debatable. What’s for sure is that long after all the tiki-taka tedium is forgotten there’ll still be an autumn afternoon in Sunderland where Darren Bent bamboozled Pepe Reina with a badly placed beach ball.