Cotton Bowl, Dallas, 9 July 1994. Brazil against the Netherlands in the quarter-final.
Bebeto scored to put Brazil 2-0 up, and instead of the usual celebration he ran towards the cameras and began rocking an invisible baby in his arms. His son Mattheus had been born on 7 July 1994, two days before the match. Romário and Mazinho ran over and joined in, and the three of them rocked the imaginary child together.
It is one of the gentlest things ever seen on a World Cup pitch, and it was done in the middle of a quarter-final.
Brazil's day in Dallas
The match itself was a classic. The Netherlands came back into it before Brazil won 3-2, and Brazil went on to lift their fourth World Cup that summer.
But the result is not what people remember from that afternoon in Texas. They remember a father's joy, shown in a single gesture and shared with his teammates on the biggest stage in football.
Why does the cradle celebration rank at number 14?
Because it spread. The celebration has been imitated by hundreds of footballers around the world since 1994, and it became perhaps the most copied goal celebration in the game. Players still do it, usually after a birth in the family, and most of them know exactly where it came from.
Plenty of goal celebrations are about the scorer. This one was about a baby two days old in Brazil, who became probably the most famous newborn in world football without doing anything at all.
Tomorrow: number 13.
