No list of the greatest goals contains a tap-in. The exclusion is so consistent that it functions as a rule, and the reasoning behind it is worth examining because it is not really about difficulty.
The visible act is trivial
The final action of a tap-in is a short push with the inside of the foot into an unguarded net, and anybody could perform it.
Greatness in football is generally attributed to actions a viewer could not replicate, so the finish disqualifies itself immediately.
What the judgement misses is that the finish was never the hard part, and the hard part happened several seconds earlier.
The work is in the arrival
Being unmarked six yards out at the exact moment a cross arrives requires beating an offside line, losing a marker, and timing a run to the yard.
Defenders spend the whole sequence trying to prevent precisely that, so the empty space the striker occupies was created rather than found.
The skill is real and repeatable, which is why the same forwards keep appearing in those positions season after season.
Credit gets reassigned to the passer
Because the finish looks easy, observers redistribute the credit to whoever delivered the ball, and the cross becomes the impressive part.
That is partly fair, since the delivery was difficult, but it treats the run as though it happened automatically.
A cross into an area with no runner is a wasted ball, and the presence of the striker is what turned it into a chance.
Pressure is invisible in the replay
Missing from close range in a decisive match carries a weight that a viewer watching a clip cannot feel, and forwards do miss them.
Composure under that pressure is a genuine attribute, but there is no way to see it in the footage of a goal that went in.
Consequently the only evidence of the skill is its absence, which appears in highlight packages of misses rather than of goals.
What the convention costs
Excluding these finishes builds a picture of goalscoring dominated by strikes from distance, which is not how most goals are actually scored.
Young forwards who absorb that picture practise shooting from the edge of the area rather than movement inside it.
The players who score the most are almost always those who did the opposite, which is the quiet argument against the whole convention.