[ad_1]
André Onana, the Manchester United goalkeeper, was preparing to defend against a free kick in a Premier League game last December when he realized someone was behind him. It was Leon Bailey, the Aston Villa winger. Onana regarded Bailey with confusion. How could Bailey be standing there, between him and the goal, during a free kick?
Then Bailey began to sing. “Ohhhh-na-na, look what you started,” he teased — the chorus of “Na Na,” Trey Songz’s 2014 hit. “Oh-na-na! Why you gotta act so naughty?” Bewildered, Onana complimented his voice. Bailey responded with a little dance. “The whole point was for me to distract him,” Bailey says now.
Bailey’s positioning had been choreographed by Austin MacPhee, Villa’s set piece coach. Earlier that week, MacPhee had called Jonathan Moss, then the Premier League’s supervisor of referees, to ask whether positioning a player behind a goalkeeper during a free kick would be legal. It was, but only if the player didn’t physically impede the keeper, remained out of his line of sight, and was uninvolved in the play that followed. MacPhee then met with Bailey at the canteen at Villa’s Bodymoor Heath training facility to discuss the role he’d scripted.
Bailey was into it. “I just thought it was something new and interesting,” he says. “I said to Austin, ‘I’m going to go behind him. And then I’m going to sing a song.'”
As John McGinn approached the ball, Bailey dashed out from behind Onana to remove himself from the play. Simultaneously, Jacob Ramsey ran down the right flank, presumably McGinn’s target. Amid the confusion, McGinn bounced a kick a few feet in front of Onana, who flailed at it as it skidded past and into the net. In the coaching box beside Villa manager Unai Emery, MacPhee broke into a grin.
MacPhee is one…
[ad_2]
