Ask people to name the greatest goals they have seen and the list will include several unremarkable finishes. What made them memorable was the situation surrounding them rather than anything the striker did.
Stakes attach the memory to the moment
A goal that decides a title, a final or a relegation is encoded alongside everything else happening at that instant, including where the viewer was sitting.
That density of association makes the memory unusually durable, far more so than a technically superior goal in an ordinary fixture.
The strike itself may have been a simple side-foot from six yards, and the recollection will still be vivid decades later.
Timing within a match does the same work
A goal in the final minute of a match that was drifting produces a swing from resignation to elation in a couple of seconds.
The emotional distance travelled is what people remember, and the size of that distance has nothing to do with the finish.
Equalisers late in a losing position are remembered better than the winners that follow them, because the reversal was steeper.
Scarcity of the scorer contributes
A goal scored by a defender who has not scored in years, or by a substitute in his first appearance, carries a narrative that a striker's goal cannot.
People remember the improbability of the person rather than the quality of the strike, and the story survives long after the footage.
This is why testimonial anecdotes so often concern ordinary goals scored by unlikely players in matches nobody else recalls.
Technique-first lists disagree with memory
Rankings assembled on technical merit produce a set of spectacular strikes that most people acknowledge but do not feel strongly about.
Rankings assembled by asking supporters produce a different set entirely, full of moments that look unimpressive without the surrounding context.
Neither is wrong, and the persistent argument between them is really a disagreement about whether a goal is an action or an event.
Why context cannot be transferred
A goal watched years later on a small screen has been stripped of the stakes, the noise and the uncertainty that made it matter.
Viewers who were not there see the technique alone, which is why one generation's defining goals look ordinary to the next.
The strikes that survive across generations tend to be those with both qualities: a moment that mattered and a finish that still looks difficult without any explanation.