England has failed again in penalty shoot-outs at major competition. I saw Stuart Pearce, Southgate, Gareth Batty, Bechkam, Lampard, Gerrard missing from the spot. Why England keep loosing it in the shoot-outs. What goes wrong? Penalty Shoot-out as Lottery How often the English media keep on describing the penalty shoot-outs as lottery, where the luckier team will go through and unluckier will go home. Trust you me after playing and following football for number of years I can safely say that it is not lottery but a skill. A skill which in not much practiced on the island. If it is a lottery than why teams like England keep on loosing it and teams like Germany and Argentina keep winning them. The Argentines never lost in penalties in world cup before they did in Berlin against Germany. Keeping Calm Second most important aspect of taking penalty is keeping the cool. I have seen numerous players over the years who usually fail to keep cool on field during 90 minutes missing penalties. E.g. Pearce in 90, Stam in Euro 2000 etc. Third is guile to send the keeper in wrong direction With increasing footages and video replays it is getting more and more difficult to beat goalkeepers in penalties. Days are gone when goal keeper came across unheard player and dont know what they will do and had to choose one way in hope they proved right. Today teams have come up with the technology support to guess where the player will shoot even before he landed on field. What are his normal scoring ratio, which areas he favors, where he is more likely to go under pressure, and what sort of hip movement while running suggests the direction of the kick etc. What should England do to start winning in Penalties If they able to come with solution of above three things I believe they will find it relatively easier to score penalties. It has to ingrained in the system that penalty wins you matches, secondly new coach Steve McClaren has to make believe the new team that they are different from the teams before and can remove the tag of penalties chokers. |
