What do you do?

Well, if you are Federico Macheda you pull out a sublime Cruyff turn to lose your defender, and curl an absolute peach into the far corner of the net with all the cold-blooded, impudent cool of a Zinedine Zidane or a Marco Van Basten in his prime. To win the game.

Anyone, and I mean anyone who enjoys football will have dreamt about a moment like that in their life. Whether you make it into professional football or not, no matter which team you support, as a child every single person who loves the game has at some point imagined conjuring the type of magical reverie that Macheda managed in Manchester United’s 3-2 win over Aston Villa.

For Macheda in that instant the intangible, the fairytale, became reality. In the years to come he could go on to be the next Gabriel Batistuta. Or he could go on to be the next Daniel Nardiello. Right now, who cares? For now, in this moment, he is simply a young boy that has just realised the dream of every starry-eyed child kicking a ball around in parks, playgrounds and fields across the globe. It was, for Federico Macheda, an occasion to cherish, full of wonder and hope in equal measures.

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