Few things bring as much happiness in football as scoring a goal. No matter whether they use their feet, heads, shoulders or ankles to propel the ball towards goal, players always savour the moment when it crosses the line. That indescribable feeling is made all the more special if the goal then goes down in the history of the game.

Mexico’s Marco Fabian can vouch for that thanks to his stunning piledriver against Germany at the FIFA Confederations Cup Russia 2017, a strike that was voted Goal of the Tournament.

“It all happened so quickly,” the Eintracht Frankfurt player told FIFA.com. “We had a free-kick about 35 metres out, and Hector Herrera was over the ball. I saw that the Germans were a bit disorganised and I asked him to lay it off to me, but he didn’t pay a whole lot of attention to me,” he added with a laugh. “So I asked him again, more loudly this time. He laid it off to me and when I saw it I just hit it. And it ended up being a great goal.”

So what is the secret to scoring a goal as good as that? “You have to move on to it in the right way and know which part of the foot you’re going to hit it with,” said Fabian, offering his advice.

“If you want to hit the ball, you have to use your instep. If you want to place it, with a bit less force, then you use the inside or outside of your foot. You also need to keep your body over the ball to keep it down, and practice a lot too.”

Fabian and El Tri​

Green and white dreams Mexico finished fourth at the Confederations Cup and though Fabian was less than pleased with that placing, he drew some meaningful conclusions from the tournament: “Obviously we didn’t achieve our objective of winning the competition, but I think we learned a lot for the World Cup. We made mistakes but we took the game to everyone, which was very positive. We switched off a couple of times and got knocked out as a result.”

The 28-year-old creative midfielder believes El Tri will come back all the stronger in a year’s time for the 2018 FIFA World Cup Russia™: “We’re definitely on the right track and I’ve got every faith in the squad and the coaching staff. We’re working really hard, and the best reward for that will come at the World Cup. We’ll try to make that fifth match .”

If he is to be there, Fabian knows he needs to be at his best, the key to which will be a successful season with Eintracht Frankfurt in the Bundesliga. He identifies very closely with his club, so much so that he now speaks German nearly as well as the locals.

“Last year was pretty good and we’ve set our sights higher this time,” explained the Mexican. “I’m very happy on a professional and personal level, and I hope we have a great season.”

And the language? “I knew it was really important so I took some classes and watched a lot of TV. And the hard work paid off, as it always does.”