My dad always said a corner was half a goal. It is not true. It never was. Today, in the English League only 3% of corners end in a goal. In fact, since Sergio Ramos disappeared from our radar, a corner is more of a representation that something will happen than that it will actually happen. I don't want to be unfair to the corner either. I know a lot has happened waiting for a corner like Míchel's invention of Tinder with Valderrama, but Cruyff taught us that scoring from a corner or a set piece is for cowards and there I go.
The archaic corner did not exist as such. When the ball crossed the finish line without being a goal, the ball continued to be held by whoever went to get it. Then it was always from the defending team until, between 1868 and 1873, the rules were established. In those early days, corners had to be taken as free kicks until an Everton player dribbled out of that corner. There was also no direct goal until 1924, in which the Argentinian Cesareo Onzari embedded the ball in Uruguay in this way. The goal should not have been on the scoreboard, but being friendly, the referee was progressive. Uruguay was Olympic champion at the time, hence the name of this type of goal.
The corner creates expectations like a first date. Defending a corner has a bit of a Poirot novel ending: everyone is a suspect. The rest, policemen. In the event that Ramos plays for either team, Poirot is obviously left over. They were probably half a goal when the defenders didn't know how to jump. Now that all the players know how to do everything, the corner is just a wing service that still believes in debts of honor.
Although a corner also perhaps momentous. The only moment in Spain's history when the tectonic plates converged and it was shown to the world that we were little more than a chaste version of Joseph Conrad's The Duelists, was on July 7, 2010. Xavi and Piqué ordered a corner against Germany that Puyol destroyed by finishing on goal to qualify us for the World Cup final. The reverberation was such (Catalonia, Spain) that it reached the ears of Zeus, who, enraged, wanted to punish us and therefore sent us the process, Vox and the hair grafts to Turkey.
