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'As soon as I saw a little space…'

During the lockdown, fans of Le Gym were asked to vote for their favourite goal since the club's return to the top division. The winner is Ricardo Pereira. On 30 April, 2017, against Paris, the Portugal international crafted a masterpiece in front of 33,190 supporters at the Allianz Riviera. For the club's '12th man', no player has produced a better goal in the last 20 years. What led to this moment? And what do those who created it remember about it?

20 seconds. Three players who touch the ball, and after moving up the pitch, the top corner is cleaned out. It's the 48th-minute of a top-of-the-table clash between Nice and Paris. The goal had everything: battling, dribbling, acceleration, a dummy run, frustration, a difficult choice, audacity, and a touch of luck. In short, everything that made up Les Aiglons' 2016-17 vintage.

At the start of the move, the Rouge-et-Noir were sitting very deep. Everyone played their role, starting with the first defenders: the forwards. Younes Belhanda was unrivalled in this aspect of the game, and had been magnificent in the first half. The Morocco international added inspiration to his perspiration for the team's cause.

Ahead at the break (1-0), Le Gym are under pressure after the restart, but a bad touch by Thomas Meunier allows Belhanda to regain possession. Three Parisians crowd round him, but Belhanda slinks away from them silkily, and finds Arnaud Souquet just as Serge Aurier thinks he can win the ball back. It was a risk, but one that paid off.

SOUQUET: 'I CAN'T PICK OUT MARIO'

Souquet moves 40 metres down the right, Belhanda follows and — with Mario Balotelli — it's three against five. Mario darts in behind the Paris defence, who stop and appeal for offside.

Nine times out of ten, Souquet would have played the Italian in, but the full-back — now at Montpellier — held back "because I'm not sure I can get the ball to him. I thought it was perhaps better to slow the move down. In the end, I wait, and it gives the others time to arrive." One of them is called Ricardo.

He had already caused Maxwell a wealth of problems in the first half, so much so the Brazilian had been replaced at half-time and Aurier was now on the left. Not that that changed much. On the 'wrong' flank for his preferred foot, the Paris full-back tried to baulk Ricardo's run, but the current Leicester City man was unperturbed. "Ricardo had been working on shooting with his left for weeks," Dalbert said after the game. You could see that it had not been for nothing…

Instead of going outside, Ricardo cuts back inside. "It was something I'd tried in the previous games, against Lille and Toulouse," he said. "The week before the Paris match, we had worked in front of goal a lot in training, I had applied myself to do what I did. That's why, when I saw a little bit of space, I tried it."

The ball finished in Kevin Trapp's top corner and the Allianz Riviera rose as one. "It's a great memory, one of the best goals of my career," Ricardo said. "Paris, at home, with a great atmospere. I had my mum, my nephew and a friend in the stadium. It was perfect. I'll never forget it."

C.D.