favourite football photograph

It was taken by the Fulham Club photographer, Ken Coton. The man with his arm raised is Fulham’s greatest player ever, maestro Johnny Haynes. Johnny Who? Many of you will ask. Let me remove such dreadful soccer ignorance by politely telling you that the said Haynes was an inside forward who played for Fulham from 1952 to 1970, scoring 157 goals in 657 games. More importantly (can there be anything more important than Fulham?), Haynes was captain of England on 22 occasions, playing for his country 56 times in all. No less an authority than Pele said that Haynes was the “best passer of the ball I’ve ever seen”. So why is this such a good photograph? For an answer, I turned to another maestro, another authority, Mrs Roving Eye. “She who must be obeyed” identified the following reasons for the photo’s excellence: The ball in the foreground appears massive and serves to lead your eye into the photo. The three Plymouth Argyle players and the stadium roofing create a rectangular frame around Haynes, who clearly stands out in his white shirt. All components of a goal are there i.e. the ball in the back of net, the beaten goalkeeper, the dejected defenders and goalkeeper, the victorious goal scorer and the jubilant fans.