By Fernando Kallas
NEW YORK, July 2 (Reuters) – Penalty shootouts have always been football’s cruellest mind game — a nerve-shredding walk into noise, doubt and national dread. What has changed over recent years is not the pressure, but the preparation — and at this World Cup, players, coaches and goalkeepers are increasingly treating penalties less as a lottery than as a specialist discipline with enormous rewards.
Germany and the Netherlands have already learned that the hard way, exiting in the round of 32 after shootout defeats by Paraguay and Morocco. Belgium’s Youri Tielemans provided the counterpoint, converting a stoppage-time penalty in extra time to complete a stunning comeback victory over Senegal.
For Geir Jordet, professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Sciences and author of “Pressure”, a book on penalty psychology, the old line that penalties are a lottery should be locked in a cupboard with old leather balls.
In a successful World Cup campaign, facing a penalty shootout is almost inevitable, Jordet told Reuters. “To not spend time on that is very strange,” he said.
“Ultimately there will be a young player whose legacy will be defined by the failure in a penalty shootout, which is a massive negative emotional trauma that we’re inflicting on this player as a coaching staff, as an FA, and even as a football industry.”
Penalty shootouts are unforgiving and ruthless. In “Pressure”, Jordet gathered video of all 718 shots from every men’s penalty shootout at the World Cup, European Championship and Champions League from the introduction of shootouts in 1970 through 2023.
ENGLISH TRAUMA
His research found that 53% of players who missed behaved in a similar way afterwards: making themselves look smaller, falling to the ground, hiding their faces in their hands, looking down or avoiding their teammates as they walked back.
England know the trauma well.
“The England story is fascinating,” Jordet said. “They lost six out of seven penalty shootouts in the ’90s and early 2000s. And this was common knowledge in England that we go far in the tournament, we have fantastic talent, and then we lose on penalties.
“So then they took hold of this and they orchestrated something new. They created these big penalty projects… they’re very pioneering and innovative, comprehensive in their approach.”
Under Thomas Tuchel, England are trying to keep the laboratory running.
He believes penalties come down to execution and repetitive action. “The FA has a programme in place. We follow this programme in detail, and it’s just an important and very specific part of football that comes into play in knockout matches,” he said.
Spain coach Luis de la Fuente was equally blunt.
“Kicking a penalty is not something that happens at random,” he said. “Just as we have specialists in free kicks, in corner kicks, we have specialists in penalties. Not everybody can shoot a penalty.
“We have to focus on the psychological aspect as well. For some of them, it’s much harder, and others are just eager to shoot penalties.”
Jordet’s research has long focused on those tiny betrayals of stress: the hurried walk from the halfway line, the face, the whistle treated like a starting gun.
STARTING GUN
“Facial expressions will indicate anxiety,” Jordet said. “But the question is always, how do you deal with these emotions?”
Some players, he said, want the ordeal over too quickly. “The pivotal moment for that is when the referee blows his whistle,” he said. “Some players look at this as like a starting gun. The ones who react to the whistle very quickly, that to me is not a particularly good sign because it could indicate that their focus is basically on their emotions and not on the task at hand.”
Yet there are exceptions. Kylian Mbappe, Jordet said, is “one of the quickest penalty takers in the world” but remains among the best because speed is part of his entire footballing nature.
Tielemans, who used a short run-up against Senegal, said preparation had mattered as much as nerve.
“We’ve been practising the last few days,” the player said. “In that moment you just try to be confident and trust your abilities.”
Then there are the goalkeepers, no longer the poor souls simply guessing which way to dive. Morocco’s Yassine Bounou, known as Bono, has turned the duel into a confidence trick in gloves.
“Goalkeepers have been through a revolution,” Jordet said. “Goalkeepers are more prepared. So far in this World Cup, we’re seeing how goalkeepers have kind of gained a little bit of an edge by just being smarter than the penalty takers and using analytics and data better than what we have seen in the past.”
Jordet said Bono’s speciality is tricking the taker who waits for the goalkeeper to move.
“He has developed this into an art,” Jordet said. “He has shown that against some of the top penalty takers in the world using this technique.”
In the shootout that decided the Morocco v Netherlands last-32 game, two Dutch players missed the target, and another one had his attempt saved by Bono.
“Bono uses this double fake movement where he moves on the goal line at exactly the right moment to deceive (the taker) into believing that he’s going to go to the left, but in fact he’s going to the right,” Jordet said.
Brazil coach Carlo Ancelotti has been treating penalties with utmost seriousness, splitting his squad into two teams for full shootout rehearsals, with players waiting on the halfway line, walking to the spot and going through the ritual while he studies body language and tendencies.
Despite all the practice and analysis, though, somewhere in this tournament another young player’s career is likely to be defined by his shot from 12 yards.
(Reporting by Fernando Kallas. Additional reporting by Ethan Plotkin, Nick Said, Hatem Maher, Rohith Nair, Nick Mulvenney, Philip O’Connor, Dan Catchpole and Trevor StynesEditing by Toby Davis)
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