Jay-Jay Okocha collects the ball from Uwe Bein with only Oliver Kahn to beat. He declines the opportunity to shoot with his left, shifting the ball to his right foot before leaving the Karlsruhe goalkeeper on the grass with an extravagant feint.
Time to shoot? Not for Okocha. He darts left, takes on another defender and cuts back on to his right once more, then back to his left. There is a pause. Kahn has recovered. Slaven Bilic has raced forward off the line to engage. The moment seems to have passed.
It is then and only then that Okocha pulls back his left foot and fires the ball between two defenders and past Kahn into the net. Eintracht Frankfurt have won the game and their young substitute Okocha has scored one of the most memorable goals of all-time.
It is the greatest goal in the history of the Bundesliga, according to Jurgen Klopp. Kahn, that magnificent German goalkeeper, says he is still dizzy from the experience in 1993. Okocha settles for calling it the favourite goal of his long and brilliant career.
“It just took longer than I expected,” he says.
The shot might have come first time but Kahn was right there. “It wasn’t planned, you know. It was a counter-attack and when I got the ball, I had the goalkeeper in front of me, so I pretended as if I was going to shoot to get rid of him, but he didn’t want to go away.”
A second feint shook off Kahn but by then the box was crowded. “As I was trying to dribble him, some defenders got back. All I was trying to do was to find that gap to take the shot and, fortunately, for me, I managed to get that,” Okocha explains.
