Focus on penalty kicks may pay off at end of shootouts
MOSCOW – There have been three penalty shootouts during this World Cup, and the word most often used to describe them is doubling as the tournament’s most trending excuse.
“Penalties are a lottery,” Denmark captain Simon Kjaer said after his team lost on them to Croatia.
“Yes, is it a lottery,” his head coach, Age Hareide, agreed soon after.
“A loteria,” complained Spain’s Fer- nando Hierro, which, of course, is the same thing. (Spain lost to Russia in a penalty shootout.)
He’s wrong, though. They all are. It is easy to think of penalties as something akin to a coin flip, but they’re not. Perhaps more than any other part of a soccer game, which flows with so many permutations, shootouts are something that can be prepared and planned for.
It is not foolproof, but the teams
that give the most thought and focus to how they will attack spot-kicks are the same ones that enjoy the greatest success. How about that?
Once England pulled its head out of the sand, stopped lamenting its miserable penalty shootout history and spent months under coach Gareth Southgate getting ready for the precise moments of truth it faced against Colombia on Tuesday, a funny thing happened. After five consecutive shootout defeats, stretching back 22 years, it won one.
Every team has its own philosophy, or sometimes no philosophy at all. In 1998, former England coach Glenn Hoddle told his players not to bother practicing penalties at all, as it was impossible to re-create the tension of the real action in training. England promptly went out of the tournament. On penalties.
Southgate’s methods have been studied deeply in England over the past days as the country celebrates the curse being lifted. In truth, there was no curse at all. England lost penalty shootouts because it was bad at taking penalties and hadn’t given itself the best possible shot at succeeding.
No longer.
“The approach was to leave as little as possible to chance,” said English soccer writer Matt Lawton of the “Daily Mail.” “To break it down and prepare every last detail. From the moment the referee blew the whistle to mark the end of extra time, every member of the England party, coaches as well as players, knew their role. The daily rehearsals were done for a reason.”
The depth of thinking that went into a situation that is by no means certain to arise during a campaign sheds light on how diligently Southgate manages his operation.
Once the extra-time period ended against Colombia, Southgate didn’t go around seeking volunteers to shoot, as habitually happens, but which the coaches of Colombia, Denmark and Spain did.
“In my eyes, this is an abdication of the coach’s responsibility,” Ben Lyttleton, author of “Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty,” wrote in “The Guardian.” “The coach should know the players’ ability to cope with what’s called ‘competition anxiety’ better than the players themselves.”
Southgate had already introduced forward Marcus Rashford into the game, pulling off defender Kyle Walker. He instructed the team on the list of penalty takers, sticking Rashford in the No. 2 slot and moving Eric Dier to No. 5 when he noticed striker Jamie Vardy hobbling with a groin injury. Dier ultimately hit the winning kick.
Goalkeeper Jordan Pickford, naturally, was a key part of the process. Video footage and photographs showed Pickford being handed a special water bottle by a goalkeeping coach that had detailed writing on the neck, assumed to be details of where Colombia’s players preferred to shoot. When Pickford and Colombia goalkeeper David Ospina shook hands and were instructed by the referee, the England player covered the bottle with a towel to keep it hidden.
Once the shootout began, Pickford had an additional role. He had been told to keep his body language “big” and positive at all times. As each England kicker approached the spot, Pickford would go out to greet them, handing them the ball personally, a useful tool in preventing any mind games from the wily veteran Ospina.
By the halfway line, each of England’s first five takers stood clustered together, arms linked. When Jordan Henderson missed with the third kick, he was consoled by teammates, but only briefly, so as not to wallow in the disappointment. Henderson, according to Lyttleton, was the only England man not to shoot to his natural side, i.e. to the left of the goal for a right-footed player.
Southgate ignored the old tactic of trying to figure out which player was best equipped mentally to deal with the pressure, instead choosing those who strike the ball with the cleanest technique, telling them to calmly wait a moment after the whistle blew instead of rushing into their kick.
It worked, but it is not a fail-safe system. A goalkeeper can guess correctly or get lucky, and an inch can make all the difference. Even with all the planning, England fell behind and could have lost.
It is hundreds of hours of work for a small edge of advantage. But it is worth every second when it pays off.