As Far As Mid-Game Dropkicks Go, This One Looked Innocent...Enough

Here’s that quite incredible kung fu kick from Melisse. Just a little bit late pic.twitter.com/4B1S6ByxRq

— Tomasz Mortimer (@TMortimerFtbl) July 17, 2018

I want everyone to keep in mind that I'm judging based off the rarely referenced and extremely unforgiving scale of instances in which a dropkick has been executed to perfection on the pitch, but didn't that particular cleat(s)-on-sternum contact seem relatively unavoidable? I wouldn't go as far as saying that our boy Melisse even tried to avoid it, as he seemingly lifted his second leg for no apparent reason, but when there's a set of washboard abs at your disposal you're not going to not use them to break your fall. That's just human instinct taking over, as far as I'm concerned.

Getting hit with a move that's typically delivered by those wearing sequenced speedos and face paint in a WWE ring probably shouldn't be considered an occupational hazard of playing professional soccer. However, with how long his feet hung in the air, I think there's an excellent "he ran into me!"-type case to be made that the victim was at least mildly complicit in the collision. Of course the slow motion replay helps that case exorbitantly, but the fact remains that, of the handful of gut-punching dropkicks I've seen, that one seemed the most like the incidental result of applicable athleticism and happenstance meeting in the middle of an opponent's ribcage. Then again, that's not saying all that much when this is what it's being compared to...