Major League Soccer seldom commands the attention of the football world beyond North America.
There are moments, of course. The league's global stars - David Beckham, Zlatan Ibrahimovic, Thierry Henry and the like - have attracted some headlines over the years.
But without these A-list designated players MLS rarely breaches the consciousness of the average overseas football fan.
Rarely, but not never. It just takes, in the words of Marsha Klein, "something bloody spectacular" to make a skeptical European audience sit up and take notice. Even a second's patronising glance across the Atlantic has a high threshold.
In 2012, Vancouver Whitecaps were a goal down against another of the league's Canadian clubs, Toronto FC, in the first leg of that year's Canadian Championship final.
As the clock ticked past 90 minutes the ball was crossed from a deep position on the left to the unmarked Eric Hassli, later a Toronto player.
He met the ball twelve yards out but beyond the back post, both feet off the ground, to cut a thunderous sliced volley into the top corner. Vancouver were level and Hassli had given physics cause for introspection with his unorthodox piledriver.
It was a sensational goal and was nominated for the FIFA Puskás Award. He'd scored better.
What's the big deal?
Vancouver Whitecaps were new to North America's top division but their name was not.
The original Whitecaps played for a decade in the famously extravagant North American Soccer League in the 1970s and 1980s. Their peak was Soccer Bowl '79 at Giants Stadium, where Trevor Whymark's brace against Tampa Bay Rowdies secured their only Championship.
The NASL-era Whitecaps weren't the league's fanciest team. Their title-winning squad included goalkeepers Phil Parkes and Bruce Grobbelaar - the Zimbabwean was Parkes' understudy - as well as Whymark, Ray Lewington and Alan Ball, a World Cup winner with England.
So, in a funny sort of way, the choice of designated player when Vancouver's USSF Division 2 team made way for the new MLS outfit was a snug fit for their history.
The MLS Whitecaps sprung into life for the 2011 season and were thus entitled to bring in two players under the Designated Player Rule - the Beckham Rule, as it was known at its origin - and Hassli, a solid but hardly outlandish import, was one of them.
Born in north-eastern France, Hassli turned professional with Metz at the start of the millennium and scored three times in 38 Ligue 1 and Ligue 2 matches, primarily under Albert Cartier, another relative local.
In 2002 Hassli played a handful of reserve matches on loan at Southampton before returning to France. Another false start followed at Neuchâtel Xamax in Switzerland, and yet another befell him when Servette went pop in early 2005.
He finally landed in Vancouver after mainly positive spells with St. Gallen and FC Zürich, either side of a frustrating stall back in France, at Valenciennes.
A two-goal debut in the Whitecaps' 4-2 opening day win over Toronto in March 2011 was a dream start for both the player and his club.
He'd scored their first ever MLS goal, and, despite the team's poor form over the following months and his own disciplinary record, he was about to endear himself yet further to his new fans.
Did this goal actually mean anything?
The Whitecaps followed their debut victory with fourteen winless matches on the spin; the story of their first MLS season was set. Teitur Thordarson, the head coach of the Whitecaps in their previous guise, was sacked in May.
He was replaced on an interim basis by Tom Soehn, the club's Director of Soccer Operations and formerly the head coach of DC United.
The fourteenth match in that run, in June, was a 2-2 draw against Seattle Sounders, now in their third season.
The Pacific Northwest has always been a rich territory for the sport in North America and the three-way rivalry between the Sounders, the Whitecaps and Portland Timbers was formalised as the Cascadia Cup in 2004. Each year the best club of the three gets a pot to symbolise their bragging rights.
The Whitecaps visit to CenturyLink Field was their first Cascadia Cup meeting in MLS, so there was pride at stake even beyond Soehn's trying task of turning around the team's dire showing.
Seattle, meanwhile, were on a decent enough run of their own, and drawing in gut-wrenching circumstances against Vancouver didn't knock them off course.
Hassli chipped in the game's opening goal from the penalty spot with half an hour gone, and there were few clues as to the explosive conclusion that was coming.
With nine minutes left the match lost the run of itself entirely. First, Mauro Rosales equalised for Seattle. Then Osvaldo Alonso, who'd given away the penalty, put them in front three minutes after that.
The Cuban was pivotal to what followed a minute later.
Get on with it...
The Whitecaps were reeling but resilient. A speculative ball was clipped out of defence into the right-hand channel towards the Brazilian Camilo, later a pariah in the eyes of the Whitecaps after a transfer issue, who was unable to snare it in the corner.
Seattle defender Jhon Hurtado mopped up and got the situation under control, passing to Alonso inside his own penalty area.
Alonso, typically a very tidy technical player and not prone to flapping under pressure, received the ball halfway between Camilo and Hassli. The former was out of the game, on the heels of Hurtado.
But twelve or thirteen yards away from Alonso's other shoulder was Hassli, racing past the 'D', anticipating the unexpected. The Seattle man had enough time to deal with Hurtado's pass with ease. Instead, he rewarded Hassli's eagerness.
Had Alonso missed the ball, had it snuck under his studs, it would have rolled into Hassli's path. Instead, a poor but significant touch forced him into the deviation that made the finest goal of his career.
Hassli improvised. Taking a step off course to meet the deflected ball at the edge of the penalty area, he chipped it high into the air and past Alonso's despairing recovery attempt.
Then, when it dropped, the French striker swiveled, catching the ball full on the volley and striking it towards goal.
Goalkeeper Kasey Keller had no idea what was happening. The unusual nature of the attempt caught him out as much as the flight of the ball, which seemed to hang in the air as it arced beyond Keller and kissed the far post on the way into the net.
His celebration was magnificent. All one can ask of a 6'4" balletic battering ram of a striker is to blend emotion and arrogance after scoring a screamer.
Hassli delivered, raising an arm to demand recognition and then slapping his badge with a force that might have knocked over a smaller man.
This sensational strike earned Hassli a nomination for the Best Play ESPY Award - Excellence in Sports Performance Yearly, to give the (then) ESPN award its absolutely not retrofitted full name - but he was beaten by Abby Wambach's goal against Brazil at the FIFA Women's World Cup a month after his effort.
So, this is a goal people talk about?
In November 1989 USA international Paul Caligiuri scored the winning goal in a vital match against Trinidad & Tobago. Their 1-0 win secured a place at World Cup Italia '90, the first time they'd qualified for forty years.
It was, in American soccer parlance, "the shot heard around the world", a reference to the literal shot that kicked off the American Revolutionary War in 1775.
A year before Hassli's goal in Seattle it was Landon Donovan's stoppage time winner against Algeria at World Cup 2010 that inherited the label.
The USA's influence and presence around the world bleeds truth into such hyperbole but the ripples from Donovan's plop into the pond were fleeting. When it comes to the game in America the world rarely cares.
But Hassli's goal made a mark. It quickly passed a million views on YouTube and generated a buzz. It was clicked and covered and cooed over from Seattle to Sydney and back again - briefly, at least.
In the UK, a third-rate national radio station even asked if Hassli's self-assisted volley was better than Marco van Basten's famous iconic volley for the Netherlands against the Soviet Union at UEFA EURO '88. It was not.
It was, however, commonly said to be the best goal in MLS history up until that point.
"I don't know if I've ever seen any goal that good not scored by Ronaldinho," wrote SBNation's Kim McCaulay. "I'm not sure if I've ever seen a guy run onto a ball at the edge of the penalty area, flick it up to himself, then hit a volley that loops over the keeper into the top corner.
"That's insane, jaw-dropping stuff."
Hassli's goal was instantly and universally crowned MLS Goal of the Year, even before the final whistle at CenturyLink Field was blown.
He would be bested, it turned out, by Portland Timbers rookie Darlington Nagbe, later of Atlanta United and Columbus Crew.
Nevertheless, Hassli's goal followed him around for the rest of his career. He was never delusional about how special it was, or about the true nature of its execution.
"I closed my eyes and shot," he told the Whitecaps website after the match. "I had a lot of luck there."
Hassli later spoke to FourFourTwo about the goal.
"At the time we were losing a lot," he said in an interview with Gregg Davies. "I was relieved, and happy for the fans that they finally had something to cheer about.
"I've worked on my volleys since I was a little kid in France. They don't happen too often in a game; you need space and perfect timing - and a bit of luck."
There it is again: luck. One player's fortune is another's failure and on this occasion the unlucky opponent was Keller, familiar to European fans from his time in England, Spain and Germany, as well as 102 caps for his national team.
Keller, as much a spectator as any of the Emerald City Supporters, was circumspect in the aftermath.
"I could give him that shot probably another 99 times and I don't know if he's going to score it," he said. "Sometimes you've just got to shake somebody's hand and say, 'Hey, that's a hell of a goal.'"
Here in the UK the local football commentariat went bonkers for Hassli's spectacular volley. It was, they said, an absolute beauty. A wondergoal.
For fans of MLS it was refreshing to see a fabulous MLS moment acknowledged without side or cynicism. It deserved its reception.
Wasn't Hassli the guy who got sent off for the shirt thing?
Hassli was a man of moments, that's for sure. It's hard to be a shrinking violet when you're so big and inconspicuous a character.
Barreling through defenders was a characteristic of his game along with blockbusting volleys, but Hassli's is a creative mind with a pronounced devious aspect for us all to enjoy.
How else would he have taken to the field in only his fourth MLS appearance prepared for the shenanigans that got him sent off against New England Revolution in April 2011?
With the Whitecaps already down to ten men thanks to Gershon Koffie's straight red card for an elbow on the stroke of half time, Hassli was introduced as a half time substitute.
Within four minutes he'd been booked, taking his disciplinary tally to four yellow cards, including one red, in 144 minutes of MLS football.
The offence was an elbow that was either more accidental or more vicious than was Koffie's depending on the small matter of intent.
A few minutes later the ten-man Whitecaps were awarded a penalty. Hassli stepped up, gave goalkeeper Bobby Shuttleworth the full Panenka treatment, and strode towards the Whitecaps supporters behind the goal.
He removed his shirt and threw it in the crowd, believing, perhaps, that he would escape punishment on the grounds that he was wearing the same shirt underneath. Name, number, patches, the lot. Because why not?
Referee Baldomero Toledo was having none of it and reduced the Whitecaps to nine. Steve Nicol's Revs later lost AJ Soares to a red card but they equalised, finally, in stoppage time.
Hassli was averaging under an hour per dismissal; it was quite the start, and by the time the Whitecaps played Seattle in June he'd already acquired another.
What happened next?
The Whitecaps won the match after Hassli's volley, beating Philadelphia Union 1-0 thanks to Alain Rochat's first MLS goal for the club. They lost the next four.
In their debut season a Vancouver finished bottom of the Western Conference, with a worse record than any team in the East.
Seattle got their revenge north of the border in September, beating Vancouver 3-1. Hassli was booked.
That was the day Seattle claimed 2011's Cascadia Cup, the result confirming that neither the Whitecaps nor the Timbers could catch them in their curious mini-table that season. In October, Portland beat Vancouver to ensure they finish bottom of that table too.
Interim coach Soehn went back to his role as the team's Director of Soccer Operations as Vancouver turned to a Scotsman, Martin Rennie, for season number two.
The Sounders finished second in the Western Conference and second overall to claim a place in the Conference semi-finals, in effect the quarter-finals of Major League Soccer's post-season play-offs as they were organised at the time.
They lost 3-0 to Real Salt Lake and mounted a stirring second-leg comeback, but could only manage a 2-0 win. Salt Lake lost in the next round to Los Angeles Galaxy, who went on to beat Houston Dynamo in the 2011 MLS Cup. Beckham finally had his title.
Hassli, in a different sense, had also had his moment. He was traded to Toronto in July 2012 in exchange for a first round pick in a the 2014 SuperDraft and an international player spot; God bless MLS.
Still a designated player, Hassli had been playing less - Rennie often opted to play with a single striker - and back problems blighted the Frenchman's career from then on. His impact at Toronto was negligible.
They traded him to FC Dallas in February 2013 for the significantly downgraded quarry of a 2014 SuperDraft second round pick, and they got no more than their investment deserved.
In 2014 Hassli signed for his last club, San Antonio Scorpions of the North American Soccer League, North America's de facto second division. In keeping with the notorious history of the NASL name, the Scorpions folded in 2015. Within a few years the league followed.
For Hassli, that was that. But it's better to have burned brightly for a minute than to have never burned at all, and Hassli's name won't be forgotten in Vancouver, Seattle or Toronto.
In the grand scheme of things not many players have a moment of genuinely world class brilliance to look back upon in retirement. Hassli has two, and the first of them made him famous around the globe, if only for a day.
***
Words by Chris Nee. Art by Dotmund.
@SphinxFtbl