Lists of the greatest goals are heavily weighted towards shots struck from far outside the penalty area. The bias has a cause, and it is about how the goal is experienced rather than how difficult it was.
Flight time is what creates the reaction
A long shot spends a noticeable period in the air, and during that period everybody watching knows what might be about to happen.
That anticipation builds the sound in a stadium before the ball arrives, so the goal is accompanied by a crescendo rather than a single burst.
A close-range finish is over before the crowd has processed it, which means the reaction follows the event instead of accompanying it.
Distance is visible, difficulty is not
Anyone can see that a shot was struck from forty yards, because the distance is drawn on the pitch and shown in every replay.
The difficulty of a six-yard finish under pressure from two defenders is invisible, since the only evidence is the space that was not there.
Rankings assembled by public reaction therefore reward the attribute that can be perceived rather than the one that required more skill.
Long shots are rare, and rarity reads as quality
Most shots from distance miss, so the ones that go in stand out against a background of failure that everyone has watched.
Tap-ins are common, and commonness suppresses the sense that something exceptional happened even when the movement that created it was excellent.
The scarcity is doing much of the work in the judgement, which is why the same goal scored twice in a match feels less remarkable the second time.
The camera is built for it
A main broadcast camera sits high at the halfway line, framing a wide view that captures a long-range strike from launch to net in a single shot.
Close-range goals happen at the edge of that frame, in a crowd of bodies, and often require a replay from a different angle to be understood.
Footage that works without explanation circulates more, and circulation is what puts a goal into the lists in the first place.
What the bias leaves out
The goals that disappear are the ones where the skill happened before the shot: the run that beat an offside line, or the movement that emptied a space.
Those require knowing where the defenders were and what the alternatives had been, which a replay of the finish alone cannot convey.
A ranking honest about this would have to rate build-up and movement alongside the strike, and almost none of them do.