The Glorious Art of the Penalty Shootout
Some people hate penalty shootouts. They think they’re too fickle or unfair. They think that penalty kicks don’t represent justice in a result after 120 minutes of stalemated football. Those people are wrong. Penalty shootouts are the purest, simplest, truest way to decide a drawn game of football that could ever be devised.
What could be more perfect than spotties at 12 yards? It’s the very sport itself reduced to its most elemental aim: kick the ball into the goal. And with that simplicity comes absolute chaos as the pressure and nerves grow to overwhelming proportions. You either score or you miss. The fate of a nation could depend on it. Technical ability multiplied by mental strength. It’s all there in that singular act, repeated five times each with sudden death if needed.
The English football team has regularly found themselves on the wrong side of fate when it comes to penalties because they never took them seriously enough. It was a common joke, a misery complex, that penalties were a lottery and England were cursed with bad luck. Three previous times they’d been defeated on spot kicks at World Cups – losing 4-3 to Germany in the semi-finals in 1990, 4-3 to Argentina in the round of 16 in 1998 and then 3-1 to Portugal in the quarters of 2006. Then again in the European Championships they beat Spain (another team that’s had issues with penalties) 4-2 in the quarters in 1996 but lost to Germany 6-5 in the semis. They were eliminated 6-5 by Portugal in the 2004 quarters (with goalie Ricardo scoring the winner) and lost 4-2 to Italy in the 2012 quarters.
Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, Paul Ince, David Batty, Frank Lampard, Steven Gerrard, Jamie Carragher and Jordan Henderson. Gareth Southgate, David Beckham, Darius Vassell, Ashley Young and Ashley Cole. The combined team of England players to have missed kicks in major tournament shootouts is an impressive one. Plus with Southgate, whose crucial miss doomed the team in the 1996 Euro semis, they even have a decent manager.
Gareth Southgate’s a great example of the old saying that you’ve gotta lose one to win one. He suffered the notoriety of missing. He also masterminded the English shootout victory over Colombia. There’s definitely an element of luck involved in any shooutout, just look at Henderson’s penalty. Hardly the perfect kick but if he’d kept it on the ground and not a foot in the air then David Ospina probably couldn’t have gotten down to it in time. Even then, he’s only saved it because he went the right way and made an incredible stop with one hand. Could be that Hendo telegraphed it but the keeper’s still making a guess, even if it’s an educated one. Luck is a part of the equation for sure.
But only part of it. Most of it is confidence and ability. All these players have the ability. Not all of them have the confidence. Southgate’s brilliant trick was taking as much of the mystery out of the process as possible. He forced the team to confront their fears, and by extension the fears of the entire footy loving English public, through constant practice and preparation so that the act of stroking a ball into a net from 12 yards became a routine rather than a challenge. Ask Kieran Trippier in his post-match chat…
Kieran Trippier: “We practised and practised and it paid off. Pick a spot and in training I was always going to put it in the same place. I keep going on about the spirit of the team. We carried on, we believed and, in the shootout, we have some great takers.”
Confidence, mate. All about confidence. England practiced penalties over and over after training, treating the situation with the respect that it deserves and thus earning themselves an edge. Jordan Pickford and the analytics team will have done near endless work on the penalty-taking habits of potential opponents. England aren’t alone in this, check out the absolute masterclass of goalkeeping that was Danijel Subasic vs Kasper Schmeichel when Croatia and Denmark went to spotties. But England are also an example of a team who have neglected to earn that edge in the past and unwittingly accepted defeat.
Then there are all those little things that one can do to gain the edge for each individual spot kick. Harry Kane is as good a penalty taker as anyone in the world right now. He played it calm, he did things at his own pace. He didn’t panic or hesitate. Marcus Rashford looked a little more timid as he stepped up but then he unleashed a superb kick right inside the post, turns out understated is just his thing. Then you know what? Rashford went over and said good luck to Jordan Pickford as he stood all on his own getting ready to step up for his next turn. All about the positive psychology.
Pickford’s own routines were all about controlling the moment. He walked out in front of the line and then backed up onto it, making himself appear bigger in the goal frame than he really was (remember his size was a big talking point before this game). Then he’d jump up and down, hands rocking the crossbar. Trying to be as intimidating as possible, to take up as much room as possible.
Most penalties are scored, even under the pressure of a shootout. You can dive the right way but still not have a chance if it’s smashed into the top corner like Trippier’s one. But if you dive the right way four out of five times then you’ll probably get one save-able one in range of the mitts and Pickford made a stunning stop on the final kick from Carlos Bacca.
One other thing that Pickford did? You didn’t get a great look at it from the telly coverage but he personally handed the ball to each subsequent England taker, which allowed them to walk up with ball in hand (or in Jordan Henderson’s case, do some juggles – guess which dude missed?), in possession of the object of importance and thus in control of the situation, rather than strolling up naked and waiting for the ref to designate things.
See, these are all tiny things but they can make an enormous difference when they add up. Jordan Henderson missed first, remember. England were on the brink then and yet they held their nerve and instead it was Juan Uribe who faltered, putting slightly too much on his kick and sending it off the proverbial woodwork. Not sure on the stats here but it seems like the team that misses early often comes back in these things. Tough as it is to take a penalty knowing that you simply have to score, it’s also gotta be tough to take one when you know your team will get a second chance if you miss – that casual slip of accountability can be fatal. Missing cannot be an option in your mind as you strike the ball or else miss is exactly what you’ll probably do.
Penalty shooutouts are the best, don’t even start to argue. Even the most boring 120 minutes of football is redeemed by a great shootout. Nothing else in sports compares to the sustained, boiling pressure of the penalty shootout and that’s just from our perspective sitting at home and watching on telly.
They are ruthless, they can be unbearable… but they’re not flukes. The team that executes better usually wins. That’s football.
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