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Crawley are seeing this out pretty easily. Eight minutes and added time remain.
“I am not sure that I agree that Bernado Silva’s goal ‘wasn’t a volley’,” emails Tristan Ellis. I can see why you are saying this – he shot after the ball had bounced – but the context of this is that it’s football, not tennis. In tennis, a shot is either a volley (hitting the ball before it has bounced) or a groundstroke (hitting it after a single bounce). Tennis shots are always played when the ball is in the air, and always after a maximum of one bounce, however, and describing shots as vollies and groundstrokes reflects that different techniques are required for each. In football, most of the time the ball is played when it is on or close to the ground, and there is no limit to the number of bounces that can occur. Therefore I think it is legitimate to refer to a player kicking the ball at hip height or above as a volley irrespective of whether it has bounced or not beforehand, as this requires a specific technique that is different to other footballing skills. Whether or not the ball has bounced beforehand is relatively unimportant.”
It’s unimportant in deciding how good a goal it was – it was a brilliant one – but in terms of accurate description, it’s important. After that, people can then decide what they think of it, but ultimately, though football is an extremely powerful thing that has changed the meaning of many words and terms, it’s yet to exert its influence in this specific aspect.
Written by Daniel Harris
This news first appeared on https://www.theguardian.com/football/live/2021/jan/10/fa-cup-third-round-chelsea-v-morecambe-crawley-v-leeds-and-more under the title “FA Cup third round: Crawley beating Leeds, Chelsea v Morecambe and more – live!”. Bolchha Nepal is not responsible or affiliated towards the opinion expressed in this news article.
