Twenty-eight minutes into the knockout game, the Colombian wonder boy was picked out at the edge of the box by midfielder Abel Aguilar with a header.
Rodriguez, with his back towards the goal, chested the header and by the time it reached down to his feet he turned around and powered a volley that crashed in off the underside of the crossbar to send the Estadio Maracana into raptures.
The world football’s governing body announced on Monday that Rodriguez’s strike in the quarter-final to give Colombia the lead won the award ahead of Robin van Persie’s flying header against Spain.
Rodriguez became the third successive South American winner of the award, after Argentina’s Maxi Rodriguez triumphed for his thunderbolt against Mexico at Germany 2006 and Diego Forlan was rewarded for his sublime effort for Uruguay in the third-place play-off at South Africa 2010.