Christopher Drazan (Rapid Vienna v SV Josko Ried, 2011)
Wednesday 02 January 2013 12:24
The Austrian Cup may not be the go-to competition for glamour, but Rapid Vienna winger Christopher Drazan proved it’s not short on wonder strikes. Drazan, a 22-year-old with a glorious left peg, took advantage of a pre-prepared corner routine to equalise against SV Josko Ried in electrifying fashion.
“Our captain, Steffen Hofmann, takes the corner and Guido Burgstaller flicks it on from the front post,” Drazan explains. “We’d worked on it in training and it felt like the right moment to try it in a match.”
The result is one of those fleeting moments of perfection: loitering on the edge of the box, Drazan skips past his marker, runs onto the chipped pass
and sweeps a beautiful volley goalwards. Bending outwards, the ball whistles into the far inside netting, leaving Ried’s goalkeeper no chance.
Drazan runs over to the bench, first screaming, then with a look of joyous disbelief on his face. “I couldn’t believe it; I just went crazy,” he says. “The ball came to me flat and at the perfect height. As soon as I hit it, I could feel it was going in.”
Although Drazan says he hasn’t scored enough goals in his nascent career yet, this one will be hard to beat. “We
might have to wait a while until we try that corner
routine again!” he admits.
The good news, of course,
is that the moment was captured on video, and just
as Drazan hurried home to do after the match, it can forever be enjoyed in glorious
slow-motion. Austrian Cup
or World Cup, no keeper on Earth was saving this one.
Interview: Titus Chalk. Illustration: German Aczel. From the February 2013 edition of FourFourTwo. Subscribe!
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