That’s Daniel James there walking away from his debut goal at Old Trafford, the fourth in an incredible win over Chelsea, stopping for a moment to wonder how life ever got to this point…

With Neal Maupay, Tanguy Ndombele, John McGinn, Billy Sharp, Daniel James and Teemu Pukki, who has scored with his first shot on target in all of his last eight seasons, all announcing themselves to the Premier League with debut goals at the weekend, we thought we’d have a look back at some of the best debut goals the Premier League has seen.


We begin with Fabrizio Ravanelli, ‘The White Feather’, who probably had the best debut the Premier League has ever and will ever see. A hat-trick against Liverpool. We think the green flashes and grainy quality really adds to the whole experience…

Next up is Danny Rose who decided to thump in an absolute screamer on his debut for Spurs in none other but the North London Derby.

Onto Paulo Wanchope who dribbled through the entire Manchester United defence to score a debut goal that, in 2009, Derby fans voted as the best goal in the club’s history.

Remember Michu? When the Spaniard arrived in South Wales, he announced himself on the scene with a brace against QPR and then proceeded to absolute destroy the whole league for a season. Skip to 4:45 to see his second which is rather delightful.

And who could forget Federico Macheda? The man that did nothing more than announce his arrival onto the scene as that was pretty much it for his Manchester United career. Great goal though.

Sergio Agüero has become a Premier League great with 165 goals for Manchester City during his eight years with the club but he too had to start somewhere and that was with two goals and an assist against Swansea. His second that day was rather decent.

When Stan Collymore arrived at Bradford in the 00/01 season he managed to flip his 6”2’ frame upside-down and slot it into the bottom corner.

Closing off the list is Jürgen Klinsmann. Arrived from Monaco with a reputation for diving, thumped a header in and dove onto the floor in celebration. It doesn’t get better.

We know we’ve missed a few. Shout at us on Twitter to tell us who we’ve missed.


Mario Stanić joins the list thanks to @JamesClarke75.


If you enjoyed that, you can read articles from our most recent magazine here.