Confused Barnet player breaks from the wall, takes other team’s free kick

Anticipation can be a powerful thing. And when the anticipated event doesn’t play out as expected, it can be difficult to adjust on the fly. This is the situation Barnet’s Andy Yiadom found himself in during a League Two match against Northampton Town.

Yiadom was a member of the wall on a Northampton free kick. He was determined to charge the ball and attempt to block whatever Northampton tried to do with it. But when the first player to make a run at it proved to be a decoy, Yiadom found himself in no-man’s land with a decision to make: either keep running past the ball or to kick it and chest bump an innocent bystander. He chose the latter option. This earned him a yellow card.

The incident was reminiscent of a memorable moment from the 1974 World Cup when Zaire did the same thing against Brazil. So at least Yiadom can say he recreated a World Cup classic.

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