TWENTY TWO minutes into last Sunday's Lazio v Cagliari Serie A game at the Olympic Stadium in Rome, Czech international midfielder Pavel Nedved picked up a simple pass from South African team mate Mark Fish, close to touch and on the halfway line.
He drifted infield for about 10 strides, gliding past two opponents before striking a 40 yard "sizzler" that flew into the top left hand corner of the net, bending all way beyond the reach of Cagliari's Swiss goalkeeper Marco Pascolo.
It was a stunningly executed goal, a piece of sheer brilliance.
It was also a double edged goal, if such a thing can exist. For Nedved's spectacular effort not only emphatically underlined his increasing importance to the Lazio team, it also effectively condemned Cagliari's Uruguyan conch Gregorio Perez to an immediate sacking.
Nedved's consecration as a vital cog in the Lazio wheel will take perhaps the rest of the season. Perez's sacking took only a matter of hours. Even before Cagliari owner Massimo Cellino had got to Rome's Finicino airport to fly home to Sardinia, the tom toms were already reporting the imminent dismissal of Perez.
Punctually enough, that sacking was confirmed yesterday morning with a club communique.
Perez's failing had been that Cagliari went on to lose Sunday's game 2-1, despite playing for 86 minutes with a one man advantage after Lazio goalkeeper Luca Marchegiani had been sent off in only the fourth minute.
Nedved's achievement was that his brilliant individual effort had lifted a confused and tentative Lazio, putting it back - on the winning track just at the moment when the early sending off of Marchegiani had threatened to cost it dear.
The contrasting fates awaiting the two men, Nedved and Perez, were all too easily read in their faces when they both presented themselves in the press room after the game. Perez had the look of a beaten dog. He recriminated about a controversial refereeing decision which had seen a Cagliari equaliser disallowed because referee Cosimo Bolognino had not seen that a header from Cagliari's Swiss defender Ramon Vega had actually crossed the line before being cleared by Lazio midfielder Diego Fuser. Slow motion replays proved that his recrimination was thoroughly justified - the ball had clearly crossed the line.
No, he answered, coaching a club in Italy is not any more difficult than anywhere else. Perhaps he was reflecting back to last May when Argentine club, Independiente Argentino, unceremoniously showed him the door:
"It's very hard to work in soccer, very hard everywhere and not just in Italy."
Perez had begun his short news conference attempting to speak Italian, by way of reference to his host country. The stress and disappointment of his afternoon's work soon began to tell on him and he broke into an intriguing mix of Italian and Spanish. By the end, he was speaking 100 per cent Spanish. It was as if he knew only too well that he need not bother with the Italian for much longer since he would soon be on his way back home to Uruguay.
Claiming that he had a plane to catch, Perez gladly cut short his news conference, slipping out of the press room and doing his best to sidestep the waiting TV cameras. As he stood up to, leave, the "executioner".
Nedved walked in, accompanied by his own personal interpreter, Zdenek Sestak, nephew of Lazio's Czech coach Zdenek Zeman.
The use of the interpreter can, of course, be a wiley ruse. It allows the "celebrity" time to think or, in the case of Nedved, time to reduce his answers to a bare minimum. The asking and translation of questions on Sunday sometimes took up to a minute.
His replies took seconds.
At 24 years of age and in his first season of "big time" Western soccer, Nedved gives all the appearance of an old style East Bloc player.
"I don't ask myself how many goals I'll score this season. When I play, I don't think of myself but rather of the collective. I take the field determined to help Lazio".
Impassive, with his gaze concentrated firmly on his faithful interpreter and dressed in the club's official match day outfit of elegant light grey suit, Nedved was ironically about as enthusiastic as Perez before him to stretch out his interview.
Nedved is a long way removed from some of the wisecracking superstars we have become used to. Earlier this season, he told reporters that the Czech Republic's great run in the European Championships had been a moment of "great pride" for him, adding:
"I hope I'll do just as well with Lazio. This is my big chance and I don't want to miss it."
All the signs already indicate that he is not going to fluff his chance. This is one Czech player who seems destined to prove that this summer's European Championship results were no flash in the pan.
