A celebration of Paolo Di Canio and his *second* best West Ham goal

Paolo Di Canio was a bit of a mad bastard, but he was also a bloody brilliant footballer. And he scored not one but two utterly ridiculous goals for West Ham.

When you mention the name of a prolific Premier League goalscorer, with one or two exceptions, there’s normally one goal that immediately springs to mind.

For Alan Shearer, it’s the thumping volley against Everton. For Wayne Rooney, it’s his derby-winning bicycle kick.

And while Dennis Bergkamp scored some great goals for club and country, the Dutchman will forever be most associated, at least in this country, with his turn and finish against Newcastle United.

Paolo Di Canio has one of those goals too – the scissor-kick volley for West Ham against Wimbledon which remains one of the best scored by any player in the English top flight.

Just look at it. It’s great, isn’t it?

But it’s not the goal we’re here to talk about. Because there’s another one that nobody talks about but that’s equally worthy of celebration.

Going into the game against Chelsea at Stamford Bridge in 2002, Di Canio’s West Ham were, to use a technical term, an utter shitshow.

After finishing the previous season strongly under new manager Glenn Roeder, they never quite recovered from throwing away victory against a Thierry Henry-inspired Arsenal in the second week of the season.

Two points from six games saw early relegation talk shrugged off publicly, but concerns remained in private (remember the “too good to go down” narrative, anyone?), and these concerns were exacerbated when Frederic Kanoute limped off just minutes into game seven at Stamford Bridge.

Now Chelsea might not have been the devastating force they became a couple of years on, but they were unbeaten in the league and presented a huge challenge to their opponents even before the Malian’s injury.

But then Di Canio, without a goal to his name all season, produced some much-needed magic.

Sure, there’s some luck involved in the chance coming about, but we can point to plenty of other world-class goals for which that is the case. Even Bergkamp’s brilliance relies on an unfussy referee letting his pull-back on Nikos Dabizas slide.

What’s important here is not that there was *some* luck, but that Di Canio achieved the best possible outcome after doing almost *everything* wrong.

Upon receiving Sébastien Schemmel’s throw-in, he instantly takes the low-percentage move of attempting to lift the ball over the approaching Chelsea…