I have a long and painful history with scorpion kicks. Olivier Giroud scored one against Crystal Palace on New Year’s Day 2017, and I watched it go in from the wrong end of the ground. It won the Puskas Award, and for years Palace fans had to hear about it every December. So I did not think I would ever be moved by another one.
Then I watched Lizbeth Ovalle’s goal for Tigres against Chivas, and I understood why people still talk about it. It was not a scorpion kick in the strictest sense. It was something nobody had seen before, and it ended up winning a FIFA trophy.
The Goal
It happened on Monday 3 March 2025, in the tenth round of the Liga MX Femenil season, and the game had gone sour for Tigres. They had been wasteful all night, missing clear chances against a Chivas side that was defending well, and the match was heading for the sort of nervous finish every favourite dreads.
In the 75th minute the ball reached the right flank. Tigres had struggled to play out of that area for most of the game, but Jenni Hermoso, the Spain forward who won the 2023 World Cup, picked it up and whipped a cross into the box. Ovalle was standing in the middle of the penalty area with her back to goal.
What she did next is hard to describe. She kept her eyes on the ball, jumped, twisted in mid air and flicked her heels up behind her. The ball hit her heels and flew towards the far post, past the Chivas goalkeeper Blanca Felix, and into the net. Tigres won 2-0.
It looks impossible, because most players would simply have tried to turn and shoot. Ovalle did not have time for that, so she invented a different solution on the spot.
Watch here:
The Woman They Call La Maga
Ovalle is a midfielder from Aguascalientes, and her nickname in Mexico is La Maga, the Magician. She has earned it. In 2023 she scored directly from a corner against Santos with so much bend on the ball that Fox Sports called it a candidate for the Puskas Award, and she already had nine league goals that season.
Even in that company, what she produced against Chivas was different. Fox Sports Mexico described it as an inverted scorpion kick. Press coverage from Argentina, France, Brazil and Colombia followed within hours, with one Colombian outlet calling it a pirouette that had not been seen before in professional football.
What I like most is that she had no idea how she had done it.
“I Don’t Even Know How I Did It”
After the match, Ovalle told reporters she had not seen the goal and could not explain it. She said she had seen the cross, thought she would just try to touch it and see where it went, and the rest happened without her thinking.
Then she gave it a name. She had heard it called a scorpion, and she did not like the label, so she called it “El Camaroncin”, the little shrimp, and laughed. The shape she made in the air does look a little like one.
Tigres were not going to wait for anyone else to make the argument. The club posted the clip on social media and tagged FIFA directly, telling the governing body they had a Puskas nominee ready. It was confident, slightly cheeky and entirely justified.
The Award
Tigres were right. At the end of 2025, FIFA gave Ovalle the Marta Award for the best goal in women’s football. She was 26, and she became only the second player to win it, after Marta herself, who received the first one for a goal against Jamaica.
FIFA created the award in 2024 and named it after the Brazilian great. The Puskas Award, which has existed since 2009, went that year to a male player. Santiago Montiel won it for an overhead kick for Independiente against Independiente Rivadavia, and the two prizes sat side by side on the same night.
Why Two Awards Is Both Right and Not Enough
I have a mixed view on that. On one hand, a dedicated award for women’s goals is a good thing. It guarantees that these moments get a proper stage, and it gives a player like Ovalle a trophy and a night in the spotlight.
On the other hand, it means her goal was not in the main conversation. In my opinion Ovalle’s goal was better than most of the men’s nominees that year, and I do not think I would change that view if it had been put to a straight vote. The Puskas has always been about the best goal, not the best men’s goal. A separate award can celebrate women’s football, but it can also quietly keep it out of the biggest room.
That is not a criticism of the Marta Award. It is a reminder that the right answer in a few years’ time may be one trophy for everyone, with the best goal winning no matter who scored it.
Why Goals Like This Matter
There is another reason I think this goal deserves more than a viral week. Liga MX Femenil is less than ten years old, and it has grown quickly, with Tigres among its most successful clubs and world stars like Hermoso now playing in it. The standard keeps rising.
A goal like Ovalle’s does something no marketing campaign can do. It makes people who have never watched a match stop and look. It gets shared by supporters who would not normally follow the Mexican league, and some of them stay for the next game.
That is the quiet value of a moment like this. It starts as a ridiculous piece of skill in the 75th minute of a tight match, and it ends up on a world stage, bringing new fans to a league that deserves them.
Where It Sits Among the Great Goals
Football loves to rank its famous goals. Giroud’s scorpion against Palace was clean and technically brilliant. René Higuita’s scorpion save at Wembley in 1995 was a piece of theatre that people still remember. What sets Ovalle’s apart is that it was improvised.
Giroud scored from a cross, and so did Ovalle, but she did it with her back to goal, in a crowded box, with her eyes on the ball and no clear picture of what her body would do next. She did not repeat a move she had practised. She made up a new one and it worked.
I will always feel a twinge of pain when I see a scorpion kick. But I am happy to admit that this one was better than the one that beat us.
