LONDON — Unless you are the sort of person who wants to stand on the streets of Pamplona and feel the snort of a raging bull on your face as it passes within an inch of your precious flesh and bone, opportunities for real-life thrills in the modern world are increasingly hard to come by.
The dulling effects of relentless scrolling mean we now experience these primal charges through, for example, 10-second clips of a mechanical crusher squashing various household items into smithereens. They’re good, but they’re not real.
A fascination with displays of destructive power is, to varying degrees, a trait we all possess — scientists say that we might be drawn to them because of the dopamine hit prompted by the feeling of awe.
And now, to the goal.
You’ve already seen it appear on your feed, reduced and repackaged into shareable content that you can post in your Whatsapp groups. A quite good centre-back scoring a very good goal against a quite mediocre team.
However, for those present at the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium on Tuesday night it was viscerally real. Watching Micky van de Ven with your own eyes, rampaging from one box to the other past scrambling defenders, before drilling a shot past the helpless goalkeeper was stop-you-in-your-tracks awesome.
But how was it for the man himself?
“To be honest, I saw a little gap in front of me, so I was like: ‘OK I’ll start dribbling now and I will see if they can catch up.'” Van de Ven told TNT Sports. “And then I saw the space every time more and more and then at one point I felt like: ‘I’m through now, I’ll go for goal now.”
To be fair to him, it did all happen quite quickly.
Though the game was already won, the timing could not have been better for both the Dutchman and his team.
He had been at the centre of the storm surrounding this week’s Premier League crisis club since he and teammate Djed Spence appeared to ignore Thomas Frank’s attempt to get them to join him on a lap of appreciation in the aftermath of Saturday’s home defeat to Chelsea.
Frank has since revealed that the pair had since come into his office “unprompted” and apologised for their actions. The Tottenham boss joked in the aftermath of the 4-0 win over FC Copenhagen that Van de Ven can keep walking past him if the defender is angry after a match if he follows it with a moment like this one.
The Dane’s joviality was a sign of the released tension that has been tightening in north London over recent weeks as results and, just as importantly for Spurs fans: performances, have taken a nosedive.
– Tottenham 4-0 Copenhagen: Van de Ven stunner gives fans reason to smile
– Frank happy to forgive Van de Ven after solo goal
– Ogden: In attack and defense, Bayern show why they’re UCL favourites
Objectively, Frank has had a good start to life at Spurs. They are two points behind second-placed Manchester City in the Premier League and unbeaten in the Champions League.
And yet the mood among the fanbase has shifted between discontent and full-blown revulsion due to Spurs’ lack of attacking output. For Frank and his team, Tuesday’s Champions League blitz served as the perfect tonic after weeks of thin gruel.
Spurs’ struggles in the opposition box are further highlighted by the fact Van de Ven is now the team’s outright top scorer this season (6).
In the post-Harry Kane and Son Heung-Min world Spurs find themselves in, Van de Ven is arguably the only player in the squad able to produce a moment of genuine inspiration. As far as individual moments go, his burst down the left and subsequent cross for Brennan Johnson to open the scoring at Old Trafford last season was arguably the individual highlight of Spurs’ entire 2024-25 Premier League campaign.
You could, then, think that Frank was getting a little carried away when comparing Van de Ven to Lionel Messi when he spoke about the defender after the victory over Copenhagen. However, Frank’s greatest mistake was in not comparing Van de Ven’s effort to a near-identical one produced by Son that earned him the Puskás award.
Five years and 11 months since the South Korean’s goal entered Spurs folklore, here it was reimagined by Van de Ven — only it had less staccato footwork and more wide-stride brute force.
In this new, much-lamented, era dominated by big, burley men bundling set pieces over the line, it was a timely example of what pure power, athleticism and skill can do when put to proper use.
