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Penalty king Charlie Mitten scores during open play at Old Trafford in 1949 |
Why penalty kicking needs to be spot on
Victory in the World Cup could all hinge on penalties, but very few players seem to know how to take them, writes Richard Adamson
THEY call it the elfmeterschiessen – the 11-metre shot. And once again, penalty shoot-outs are likely to provide the heart-stoppingly thrilling climax to dead-heat contests in the World Cup Finals in Germany.
We have already had a taste of thrills to come in the riveting climax to last month’s FA Cup Final. With the contest all square at 3-3 as West Ham and Liverpool ended extra time in a classic cup final, the game went to penalties. And once again a breathtaking lack of technique was on parade.
And now, many World Cup team coaches are saying that mastery of the penalty kick has become a training priority, although how thorough that preparation has been, is open to serious doubt.
For the fact is that despite being the simplest kick in the beautiful game, few players even at the very highest level know the correct way of executing it, as Manchester United’s first penalty king, Charlie Mitten, always averred.
Examination of the shoot-out at the Millennium Stadium reveals only three players seemed to know what they were doing – striking the ball into one of the two goalmouth zones which no keeper can reach, high and wide to the left or right.
They were Dietmar Haman, Teddy Sheringham and Steven Gerrard. All the other penalty-takers aimed either badly or wrongly – or both (that’s you, John Arne Riise).
Charlie Mitten always insisted that even if the keeper knew where the ball was going, a penalty kick was impossible to save if struck correctly.
And as the record books show he famously proved the point with that now legendary hat-trick of penalties scored in one game – for Manchester United against Aston Villa in 1950 when Villa keeper Joe Rutherford knew exactly where Cheeky Charlie was going put his third spot-kick.
“Looking at the number of penalty misses by the supposedly best players in the world,” Charlie told me before his death in 2002, “ I often wonder how often some of them practice what is, after all, the simplest kick in soccer – and the easiest!”
Mitten insisted that this kick above all others needed practise to master, by even the most skilful in the world, so that it could be taken without thinking.
Confidence from the penalty spot came from total mastery of a motor skill, not from some breathless words of encouragement as you stepped up for that dreaded sudden-death moment.
As Eugen Herrigel put it in his seminal 1953 memoir Zen in the Art of Archery, one becomes a craftsman by rule, an artist by inspiration. Certain success is born of confidence, and confidence is born of unshakeable certainty.
Mitten fully understood this. You first had to know how to take the kick and then you had to make sure it was second nature by practice, practice and more practice.
He even went so far as to claim that any “half-decent penalty taker should be able to beat the goalkeeper blindfolded.”
Arguably, the penalty shoot-out has been the greatest innovation in the beautiful game since… well, since the invention of the penalty itself way back in 1890.
Penalties at the end of a drawn game were introduced in European trophy competitions because so many knock-out ties which finished all-square even after extra time were being decided on the toss of a coin. With the shoot-out adopted at the World Cup, the stakes were raised to unimaginably high levels of tension for players – and of thrilling spectacle for fans. Who will ever forget Roberto Biaggio’s wild miss that saw Italy lose in 1994?
He is not alone among the most consummate artists in the beautiful game. Most of the biggest names in the best teams in the world have been found wanting at this sudden-death moment.
So, in Germany, watch out for the elfmetershciessen moment, and wonder how and why £100,000 a week players are still missing the simplest kick on the planet. And wallow in the thrill, and the spectacle of it all from the comfort of your armchair.
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