This past weekend in soccer was a memorable one.
The Portland Timbers kicked off their fifth season in MLS with a 0-0 draw at home against Real Salt Lake, while MLS itself ushered in its twentieth season with a complete slate of matches. Two new MLS teams, Orlando City SC and New York City FC, played to a 1-1 draw in front of a raucous crowd of 62,510 at the Citrus Bowl in Orlando, Fla.
But unless you're a big fan of youth international friendlies or a close follower of the Proximus League, chances are that you missed some of the most spectacular strikes from around the world this past week.
Fortunately, we here at the Backcut Blog have compiled a collection of all the week's outstanding goals that you almost certainly didn't see.
We travel first to Scotland, where this past Monday, Scotland U-16 attacking midfielder and Rangers academy player Liam Burt dribbled through the entire opposing defense in Scotland's 4-1 friendly victory over Serbia's U-16s. Check it out:
Next, we travel to Belgium, where Jasper Van Der Heyden scored this curling rocket in a 2-1 victory over SC Eendracht Aalst in the Proximus League, Belgium's second division.
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Finally, we travel to -- where else? -- Kazakhstan. We'll just leave this here without comment.
But that's not all.
In Brazil, where violence between rival supporter groups has infected the sport for years, one team finally took radical action.
Sport Club do Recife recruited the mothers of 30 of their own ultras supporters as security guards and, so far, the results have been impressive. Their most recent match not only concluded with a victory, but it also finished without incidents in the stands.
Mothers, it turns out, are the best security.
