Top 10 long-range goals

After Wayne Rooney's wonder strike against West Ham, we select a rather alternative top ten of long-range goals. There are some crackers in this list!

6) Mike Hanke (Schalke 04 v Bayer Leverkusen, 2004) There is little more enjoyable for the neutral than seeing pride coming before a spectacular fall, and April 2004 brought perhaps football's greatest example of the breed. Bayer Leverkusen goalkeeper and penalty-taker Hans-Jorg Butt rather enjoyed giving his side a 3-1 lead at Schalke, and we can tell that by the way he dallied around in celebration with his teammates. Ten seconds later, a glorious thing had happened. Butt, with hands still aloft in celebration as he jogged casually towards his goal, had been forced to pick the ball out of his own net, lobbed by the quick-thinking Mike Hanke. The shortest ever time between two goals? Quite probably. 5) Burnel Okana-Stazi (FC Stal Alchevsk v FC Nikolaev, 2012) Not a goal from the biggest of occasions, but when a free-kick gets hit with such power from such distance, no one really cares. Burnel Okana-Stazi was playing for FC Stal Alchevsk in the Ukranian second tier when he pulled rank and took a free-kick from over 40 yards out. Staggering his run-up in the style made famous by Roberto Carlos, the DR Congo international lashed the ball into the top left-hand corner. The FC Nikolaev goalkeeper is in a different postcode as the ball whistles past him. 4) Xabi Alonso (Liverpool v Newcastle, 2006) We've had our time with the ridiculous, now onto the sublime, starting with Xabi Alonso's opportunistic finish against Newcastle in 2006. "You have to feel sorry for Steve Harper there," is the plea of the commentator but to that we say no. With their protection at set-pieces and permission to keep refreshing drinks and snacks in their goals, goalkeepers have it far too easy, so to watch Harper flail on the floor like a man trying to swim in honey can only be a joyful thing. The goal wasn't even a fluke - Alonso had done the same thing against Luton in the FA Cup just eight months earlier. With his other foot. 3) David Beckham (Manchester United v Wimbledon, 1996) David Beckham was just 21 years old on the first day of the 1996/97 Premier League season. He had made only 37 top-flight appearances for United, and scored 11 career goals. Given the No. 10 shirt, previously worn by Mark Hughes, the precocious talent repaid such faith when, with the score at 2-0, he sent the ball over Neil Sullivan from his own half. Since then, Beckham has turned himself into a global megastar. He has married a pop star, created a brand and persona more famous than perhaps any other individual alive today. He has played for Manchester United, Real Madrid and AC Milan, also captaining his country and almost single-handedly increased the attraction and fortunes of the game in America. And still we talk about that goal. There are two players with Premier League appearances that weren't even alive when it was scored. How old does that make you feel? 2) Bernd Schuster (Bayer Leverkusen v Eintracht Frankfurt, 1994) A goal from the former Real Madrid (and current Malaga) manager that was named Bundesliga Goal of the Decade for the 1990s, Schuster may have been 34 when he joined Bayer Leverkusen, but he remained a class act after spells with Real Madrid, Atletico and Barcelona. This is the only foreigner to ever play for Spain's big three (if Twitter is to be trusted). That season, Schuster was named first, second and third in the Bundesliga Goal of the Season, with this the best of the bunch. Picking up the ball in midfield, the German international (given an astonishingly harsh 21 caps) launched the ball over the Eintracht Frankfurt goalkeeper with a nonchalance typified by a man who clearly spends so much of his time sculpting that fine blonde moustache. He looks like a cross between Owen Wilson and Hulk Hogan, and his nickname is the Blonde Angel. Which impresses me more than it should. 1) Clarence Seedorf (Real Madrid v Atletico Madrid, 1997) By a distance the best on the list. It's a goal by a great of the modern game, and it came in the Madrid derby. It's from lob territory, but is actually no such thing, instead a filthy, gorgeous drilled shot that is still almost rising as it hits the net, leaving the goalkeeper more than bemused. Football is at its greatest when it threatens to deny both belief and physics, forcing you to reconsider what you estimate to be possible. Part of you wants to share it with the world, whilst the rest of you just wants to keep it to yourself, watching it over and over again and giggling. These are the goals that make the good great. They cannot be recreated, only admired. A version of this article first appeared on Football365