Ballack barracks Low’s contract
IN 1996, when Gareth Southgate had his own shoot-out nightmare, ‘penalty strategy’ was still in its infancy.
“Why didn’t you just belt it?” a flustered Barbara Southgate said to her son after his miss in the European Championship semi-final shoot-out against Germany.
As England prepare for the knockout stages in Russia, penalties come to the national consciousness again.
The worst record in international football is still strung around English necks, just one success – against Spain in Euro 96 – in seven attempts at major finals.
The conscientious Southgate was not going to let that wound continue to fester. His team have worked out a plan.
“More scientific than just ‘belt it’?” I asked Southgate. “I’d hope so,” he said simply.
In truth, no stone has gone unturned in the hunt for some sort of advantage if it does come down to spot-kicks again.
Southgate said: “We’ve looked at individual processes, individual techniques. Then we’ve looked at collectively how we would want to approach a shoot-out.”
First objective? “Making sure there’s a calmness, that we own the process,” he said. “That it’s not just decisions that are made on the spur of the moment or even behaviours around the team.”
The thought process ahead of the decision to let Southgate take that fateful 1996 penalty involved Bryan Robson simply asking the youngster if he had taken one before.
Southgate said he had, but failed to reveal it had hit a post against Ipswich and Crystal Palace had continued on their path to relegation as a result.
“I was the type of character who felt you should put yourself forward,” he said. “It’s probably braver though not to take one if you’re not confident.”
England have been practising penalties since March. Each one is videoed, noted and analysed.
“We’ll have a more considered list of who has been finishing in training,” said Southgate. “If we have made changes, we keep updating the list.”
Southgate reported to the FA board in May that a psychological profiling exercise had helped indicate the perfect candidates for the duty should the need occur.
Then there are the support staff. “We need to make sure it’s calm and the right people are on the pitch,” Southgate explained. “That it doesn’t become too many voices in people’s heads. We’ve looked at a lot of things.
“There are individual things you can work on. There are things that can be unhelpful for players at that moment.”
Ultimately it comes down to taker against keeper. Some are good in that circumstance, others are not.
Southgate is confident he has come up with a plan for both.
“There are players that take them regularly, have their own routine and are able to maybe change decision depending on the goalkeeper,” he said.
“Then there are others who maybe don’t take them as regularly who need to probably practice one or two stock penalties that they are able to execute at that moment.
“That’s what we have tried to do, to deduce what group they are in and is there a need for individual technique?
“Some we shouldn’t be interfering with, others we’re giving them a process which we believe will help them.”
Southgate knows what it is like to be the one to miss, however people try to console you afterwards.
It may be a cruel way to exit a tournament, but one thing any misfiring taker will not hear from his manager is “bad luck”.
“It’s about performing a skill under pressure,” said Southgate. “It’s not about luck.” MICHAEL BALLACK has slammed the German FA for handing Joachim Low a new four-year contract ahead of the World Cup.
Reigning world champions Germany were dumped out during the group stages after a horror showing in Russia.
They lost their opening match to Mexico before a last-gasp winner against Sweden kept their hopes alive.
But a 2-0 defeat by South Korea sealed their fate and sent them home.
Low’s future has been called into question despite signing a new deal before the start of the World Cup. Former Germany captain Ballack, below, says the German FA made an error in offering Low a new contract before the tournament.
“Big tournaments are fixed points for each country,” he told Betfair. “After a European or World Cup, you can judge the work that has been done in the previous two years. “The DFB have not presented themselves in a good light. Whether Low is still the right person to manage this team, I cannot say. In my experience, he was a really good coach who could give even weaker teams a clear plan.
“Today, the coach and team have to be put under serious scrutiny.”