Goals in the dying seconds: the World Cup's most agonising strikes
A goal in the final minute can be worth an entire World Cup. Iniesta's in 2010 is the proof: it came when a penalty shootout was already looming.
Some goals are worth three points and some are worth an entire lifetime. Those that arrive in the dying seconds, when the clock is running out and extra time or penalties already loom, belong to a category of their own: relief turned into an explosion.
The most important of all was scored by Andrés Iniesta. In the 2010 final, with the score blank and the dreaded shootout around the corner, the man from La Mancha stabbed the ball home in the 116th minute to give Spain their first and only World Cup. A single gesture, in the last stretch of extra time, changed a nation's history forever.
Four years later, the scene repeated with another protagonist. In 2014, Mario Götze controlled with his chest and finished on the volley in the 113th minute for Germany to beat Argentina at the Maracanã. Another final, another extra time, another goal that came when almost no one expected it.
Agonising strikes are not exclusive to finals. Group stages have produced impossible stoppage-time comebacks, goals that qualified one team and sent another home with the match dying. In those final seconds, an entire World Cup can fit into a single shot.
Perhaps that is why football grips us the way it does: because until the referee raises the whistle to his lips for the last time, nothing is written. The agonising goal is living proof that giving up too soon, at a World Cup, costs dearly.
In 2026, with so many single-elimination ties, those final seconds will once again be the most electric of the tournament. Someone, at some point, will score the goal that keeps the opponent awake at night.
Source: Wikipedia (2010 FIFA World Cup Final; 2014 FIFA World Cup Final; Andrés Iniesta; Mario Götze).