The Sport of Short Kings
Updated at 7:38 p.m. ET on November 16, 2022
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In August, the Argentine footballer Lionel Messi scored the first bicycle-kick goal of his long, decorated career, and the internet thought it was hilarious.
Coming in Paris Saint-Germain’s 5–0 demolition of Clermont in the latter’s first Ligue 1 match, the strike was perhaps not as acrobatic as people think of bicycle kicks being. Messi, like stature—only 5-foot-7—and the ball needed to be struck low, so we are not talking Michael Jordan ups. Meme accounts cracked jokes about the height of the kick, some Photoshopping tiny bicycles underneath press photos of an inverted Messi as he struck the ball.
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