When did it all go wrong, exactly?Was it the kick itself, that wayward golf swing of the right leg that propelled the moment into the realm of the immortal? Was it the stuttering approach, equal parts showmanship and hubris? Perhaps it was the long jog from the other end of the pitch, the spiking of what was already a scene of purest delirium with lactic acid.Maybe the problem was the concept itself, the skeleton of the thing. Long before the shot was fired, someone, in some boardroom, put the whole thing into motion.“Can we get Diana Ross to score a penalty in a goal that then collapses into two pieces?”It was, in fairness, a great question, dripping with both wide-eyed innocence and we-came-up-with-this-after-six-beers energy.The answering of it was — and there really is no way around this — very, very funny.Ross, for the uninitiated, took the kick and sent the shot wide. The goal frame, following its script to the very letter, fell apart anyway. The result was one of the most enduring images of the 1994 World Cup. Opening ceremonies are usually deeply forgettable things; Ross made this one memorable.Video clips of it still do the rounds, 32 years later. They are usually accompanied by mocking titles that include the word ’embarrassing’. Yet while there is every chance that Ross was mortified at the time — she has never spoken about the penalty, and turned down an interview request from The Athletic — this is a one-dimensional reading.The moment was, in its way, incredibly endearing. Think about Ross’ willingness to take the kick. Think about the lo-fi ingenuity of the fake goal. Think about the semiotics of it: the ball floating past the post; the goalkeeper still diving; the net still ripping; Ross watching on for the briefest second before sprinting onto a stage to perform a medley of her greatest hits, radiant, exultant, unbowed, a walking symbol of scratch-resistant American optimism.We’ll get into the weeds in a moment, but it is worth pausing here to establish this baseline, this undercurrent of goodwill.When did it all go wrong? When did it all go right?Diana Ross performs at the opening ceremony at Soldier Field, Chicago (Peter Robinson/Empics via Getty Images)Nostalgia: hell of a drug. It makes every chunk of history seem quaint and utopian to those who populate the next. Dangerous in the wrong hands, in the wrong minds. Watching a television broadcast from 1994 and swooning at the fuzzy beauty of it all, though? That’s probably fine.God, it’s wonderful. Graphics cascade, screensaver-like, through the opening titles. There are clips of players celebrating and fans cheering. A computer-generated football, chased by its own comet’s tail, swoops into the foreground and then away again, off into the digital ether.Soldier Field in Chicago is bathed in sunlight. Balloons, released by their volunteer masters, drift slowly up into the sky. The colours are strictly primary, the tone peppy and upbeat. Oprah Winfrey bounds into view in a white dress. “Hello, world,” she says, charmingly, before introducing the first musical act.There are hundreds of dancers on the field. They are dressed in white and hold circular white discs. Together, they form a giant arrow that points to one end of the pitch. As a drum beat starts up, they split apart, creating a causeway. Under the scoreboard, dressed in red and white, sashaying to the opening bars of I’m Coming Out, her indelible 1980 hit, is Ross.The World Cup logo is performed at Soldier Field stadium in Chicago (Photo: Todd Rosenberg/Allsport/Getty Images)It begins.She waves to the crowd, throws her arms in the air, and starts to move downfield. The white sea closes behind her. She walks and she runs and she skips. She fails to bring the microphone to her lips for one of the song’s lines, making it obvious that she is, for the time being, miming. Fair enough, really; she has enough to think about.For the first time, we get a glimpse of Ross’ temporary nemesis. The Goalkeeper — nameless, just relentlessly unidentifiable even after at least 30 increasingly demented Google searches and hours on Reddit — wears a yellow Adidas jersey with black detailing. His gloves, shorts and socks are white. His hair falls in curtains over his brow.He looks like an entitled jock-villain from a 1990s high-school drama. He’s even doing squats. I’m sorry, but he’s pure evil. Ross simply must prevail.She continues to gambol through the meadow of discs. A three-person camera crew backpedals gracefully in front of her, the legs of the swan in reverse. As Ross reaches the tip of the arrow, the dancers gather around her, forming a little amphitheatre.Do they know they are about to witness history? Does anyone, ever?A word about the goal itself, as we cut to a wide shot.On the one hand, they have clearly missed a trick with its placement. Obviously, it can’t be on the goal line — the actual goal for the actual opening match of the actual World Cup that follows this ceremony is there, dummy — but the six-yard line was available. On the other hand, you’d have to say the construction of the thing is quite impressive. There’s a slight droop in the middle of the netting, as well as a mysterious black cord — very much the Chekhov’s gun of the piece — dangling behind The Goalkeeper, but it does not look entirely false. A win for the props department.Wardrobe, too, has done its job. Ross’ trousers are loose and roomy. She is not wearing football boots, but she is not in heels, either. Plenty of penalties have been scored in generic white trainers over the decades.Here we go now.Is she celebrating in the run-up? There is plausible deniability here because celebrating looks a lot like crowd work at this level, but the question does need asking.The Goalkeeper is not on his line. Granted, he does not actually have a line, but he’s jumping around, clearly trying to get into Ross’ head. Any referee worth his salt would put a stop to it. It’s sick and immoral. Just what you’d expect from him.You know what else a decent official would spot? The clear presence of other bodies in the penalty box. Sure, there might be a rebound situation, but come on. Detailed analysis of the footage — pausing the video and counting the blurry shapes — reveals there are at least 25 dancers encroaching, plus, variously, a man with a loudhailer, two scampering cameramen, the guy who is going to pull the cord on the goal and, in the bottom-right corner of the shot, a deeply haunting figure with a clipboard.Ross’ run-up is… unconventional. She’s back, she’s forward, she’s back again. You can’t hurry these things, fine, but wow, she’s really milking this. Maybe she wants to give The Goalkeeper a full refund on his mind games.Finally, she lurches forward. She takes a huge step towards the ball. Already, alarm bells are ringing. It’s a Neil Armstrong stride, an anti-gravity leap. Too big. Too far. Her left foot does not land next to the football. It’s barely in the same postcode.The consequences of that error of geometry play out in slow motion. Her head is not over the ball. Her entire body is leaning back. She could still, perhaps, take a bit of throttle off, hope to get away with it. But no, she has a drag racer’s commitment to full power.It looks like she wants to do a toe poke. The Goalkeeper — who, despite his obvious wickedness, is in on the ruse — jumps to his right, suggesting he didn’t expect her to go to that side at all. That, coupled with the fact the net will, in half a second, open up right in the centre, indicates that Ross was probably planning to go down the middle.The contact is wrong. Her foot slices down the side of the ball. It corkscrews away to her left. It goes a metre wide of the post, wide of the goal. The crossbar cracks, the netting rips. The Goalkeeper scampers away. Ross, the microphone still in her right hand, stands there for just an instant, frozen in time.This particular video is from the Canadian broadcaster TSN. As Ross runs off, on to the next part of the show, commentator John Helm lets out a hearty chuckle. “Calamity,” he says. “I’m not sure that was supposed to happen.”Alan Green, BBC Radio 5, United Kingdom: “Who better than Diana Ross, now emerging from our left in a bright red suit and silver top? She’s going to dance away, up the middle of the pitch, from goalmouth to goalmouth, before she takes her place on the stage away to our right.”David Pleat, BBC Radio 5: “Well, it’s hard to get your mind on the football at the moment. There’s such a razzamatazz going on. It’s such a spectacle. There are hundreds of school children out there on the pitch. They’ve probably been rehearsing for six weeks for this.”Green: “Diana Ross has just taken a penalty kick, towards the goal to our right… and missed. A dubious omen. The goal posts collapse, Ross takes her place on stage, and you’ll be back with us very shortly.”Galvao Bueno, TV Globo, Brazil: “That wasn’t good from her, but at least she managed to break the goal. Absolutely North American, this opening ceremony.”Unnamed commentator, Chilean television: “[Sustained laughter].”“You’ve put yourself at the top of the list of the most unusual analysis requests I’ve ever received,” says Bartek Sylwestrzak.A specialist ball-striking coach, Sylwestrzak helps professional players to hone their shooting technique, using in-depth video analysis. He is not usually in the business of poring over footage from opening ceremonies but he kindly humours The Athletic when asked to look at Ross’ method.“I would limit myself to saying that she kicked the ball like someone who has not worked on this skill,” he says. “One prominent feature of such a shot lacking expertise is that the hip flexion is very pronounced.”Ross’ action, in other words, was an upright punt, the kicking leg extending high in the follow-through.“This is how children do it,” says Sylwestrzak, before softening his assessment. “It’s actually also how professional players often hit the ball with their non-dominant foot.”Geir Jordet is a professor of psychology at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and the author of Pressure: Lessons from the Psychology of the Penalty Shootout, published in 2024. He has done consultancy work for a host of elite football clubs, including Chelsea, Arsenal, Liverpool and Bayern Munich. He is also a big Ross fan.“The obvious explanation for the miss is that the stress might have gotten to her,” he says. “There were a lot of people around her, lots of distractions, which will make a complicated performance even more complicated, particularly for the unrehearsed penalty taker. She also had to walk from the opposite side of the field, not just from the centre circle. This added delay, while being watched by millions, adds extra pressure.“It’s obviously challenging to mime to a song, move in rhythm with the music and kick a ball, all at the same time. Just to coordinate breath and footwork is an accomplishment. Also, I doubt she’s a penalty specialist.”Jordet then puts forward a theory that The Athletic has yet to consider.“Is there another way to look at this? I’m sure the goalkeeper was the most nervous person on the field, fearful he actually might save her shot and spoil the party for everyone. Imagine being famous for being the selfish guy who would not even let Diana Ross score her penalty at the opening ceremony.“By missing the goal altogether, Miss Ross actually saved him. Thus, I’m wondering, did she do it on purpose? This may be a subtle act of selflessness, compassion and kindness — and not really a miss at all.”That Helm commentary line — “I’m not sure that was supposed to happen” — could have been deployed multiple times through the opening ceremony.It was, by any metric, an eye-catching show, building on the sprightly, slightly surreal World Cup draw a few months prior — “as if Salvador Dali produced a state lottery,” was ESPN stalwart Bob Ley’s memorable take on it — with buckets of big-ticket glamour.Ross and Winfrey were joined by Daryl Hall, Richard Marx and Jon Secada, plus 1,500 youngsters from local high schools and a 300-strong children’s choir. Yet while the thing looked great on television, there were wobbly moments behind the scenes.Winfrey, infamously, fell into a hole in the stage moments after introducing Ross. “I went straight through, down into this big pit, scarred up my legs,” she explained years later. “I was bleeding and couldn’t get out, but I could still hear Diana singing. Four guys picked me up, carried me out of the hole. They bandaged my leg and I limped back on.”Oprah Winfrey is checked by medics after falling (Peter Robinson – PA Images via Getty Images)That, though, was only one element of it. Scott LeTellier, the chief operating officer for the World Cup ‘94 organising committee, was at Soldier Field and says the entire afternoon was a seat-of-the-pants affair. “It was just a mess,” he tells The Athletic.Exhibit A: Secada injuring his arm after a dancer failed to close a trapdoor in the lead-up to his musical performance. “He actually did his whole number with a dislocated shoulder, like nothing had happened,” says LeTellier. “He pulled it off. If ever there was a ‘The show must go on’ moment, this was it.”There was also the chaotic situation up in the main grandstand, from where U.S. President Bill Clinton addressed the crowd. Sat nearby were Helmut Kohl, the German chancellor, and Pele, the world’s most iconic footballer. Considering these facts, the security was not as tight as you might imagine.President Clinton (right), alongside Helmut Kohl and former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger (Oliver Multhaup/Picture Alliance via Getty Images)“The section was not closed off,” says LeTellier, who was positioned a couple of metres from Clinton. “When Pele showed up, you had people coming up from 20 rows down, swarming him. There was no one to block them. I had to stand there, herding people back to their seats.”At one point, a peanut vendor wandered along the aisle. “It was one of those grizzled guys who looked like he’d been doing it for a long, long time,” says LeTellier. “He was shouting, ‘Peanut, peanut, peanut!’. And at one stage, he just stopped and said, ‘Hey, that’s Bill Clinton! Hey, Bill! Want a peanut?’. He got ready to throw some peanuts, at which point the Secret Service jumped up and grabbed the guy and dragged him away.“It was astonishing to me that the Secret Service didn’t insist on some type of separation or barrier between Clinton and the public. It was nearly a disaster. Fortunately, we got that corrected for future games, but I saw my life coming to a short end there.”The other image that sticks with LeTellier is Clinton, wearing a baseball cap borrowed from a volunteer, suffering in the unforgiving Illinois sun. Clinton had planned to scurry away to a VIP box after his speech but felt obliged to stay put when Kohl insisted on watching the first half of Germany vs Bolivia out in the open.“It was just sweltering,” says LeTellier. “The stadium had no overhang, no cover, and Clinton was completely unprepared. So there was the president of the United States, wearing this cheap cap, getting red in the face, sweating through his shirt. It was just the most absurd thing.”Then, of course, there was Ross’ kick.“I mean, the ball is literally in front of the goal,” LeTellier says, laughing. “You laugh, and you think, ‘How could you possibly miss it?’. Of course, after running 100 yards, like she’d done, the legs perhaps weren’t quite in the shape you’d want them to be, but it was a cold, dead shank.“I remember watching that and thinking, ‘I hope that’s not a harbinger of what’s to come over the next 31 days’.”There had been a run-through of the entire ceremony the previous day. Did Ross take a penalty then? Did she score it? “I have to assume she did,” says LeTellier. “Had she missed it then, there would have been… somebody would either have put the ball right on the line or done something different.”That, though, would have deprived us of this charming little slice of imperfection — a fact that even the tournament’s organisers admit.“It was just something we all laughed at,” Alan Rothenberg, the president of U.S. Soccer between 1990 and 1998, told the BBC in 2022. “In some ways, it might have been more entertaining than if she’d made it.”Whatever happened in that moment, whichever combination of factors conspired to send that ball wide of its target, we can say this: Ross did not let it go to her head. The performance that followed her penalty kick was spunky and joyful, a shaken-up soda can of a thing. She even had time to tackle one of the ball-juggling youngsters that joined her on stage during Why Do Fools Fall in Love — a textbook case of getting a miss out of your system by flying into the next challenge.The ceremony as a whole was every bit as successful. Clinton may have been largely liquid beneath his jacket but his speech — snappy, internationalist, with good-luck messages delivered in both Spanish and German — was a triumph. The U.S. anthem, delivered by Marx and a gospel choir, was pleasingly bombastic. There was a parade of nations, perhaps overlong, but analogue and human-scale.“We were proud of it,” says LeTellier. “It was upbeat. It held its own with Olympic ceremonies in terms of sophistication. And we spent a lot less money.”His fear that the Ross miss might prove to be a bad omen was unfounded. The rest of the tournament ran smoothly, for the most part. There were, though, a couple of echoes, subtle little callbacks to the original cosmic joke: a broken goal frame during Mexico vs Bulgaria and, in the penalty shootout that settled the final between Brazil and Italy, that decisive miss from poor Roberto Baggio.Ross, for her part, appeared not to dwell on her kick. She may, however, have learnt a lesson from it.She performed at the opening ceremony of the 1995 Rugby League World Cup in London, 476 days after that appearance at Soldier Field. She sang on the pitch, danced from touchline to touchline and geed up the Wembley Stadium crowd. She hopped into a vintage car for a slow-motion joyride around the perimeter of the field.At no point did she come within 20 metres of a rugby ball.