For all the breathtaking goals being scripted at the World Cup, how is it that players are fluffing their lines when they have to take penalties?
Germany, who have never lost on penalties in the four previous instances where their games have gone to a shootout in a World Cup, missed three out of five to be dumped out by Paraguay in the round of 32.
A few hours later that night, Morocco and The Netherlands played a nerve-wracking game of who-can-miss-the-most-penalties in their round of 32 match, with two misses for each team, before Morocco’s goalkeeper Bono made a canny save to take the African team into the next round.
That’s ten penalties missed or saved in a single night of the World Cup—weird, and unprecedented.
Being able to score when a match goes to a shootout is an essential, fundamental skill for a team. So many World Cup classics have gone down this route. The final of the last edition in Qatar, which ended 3-3 for France and Argentina, and which many consider to be the greatest final of a World Cup, had to be decided on penalties. It gave Lionel Messi, arguably the finest player in the history of the game, the one trophy that was missing from his bursting cabinet.
Or the most memorable shootout heartbreak—Roberto Baggio, the Rose Bowl in California, Brazil and Italy tied on penalties. The “divine ponytail”, who had carried Italy to the final on the back of his five goals, skied his shot, handing Brazil the title.
The penalty shootout is (in)famously a nerve-wracking affair for players. Here, the usual goalkeeper-outfield player equation gets reversed—if the goalkeeper is not able to make a save, he’s hardly to blame, but if he does make one, he’s an instant hero. The burden of the shootout lies with the penalty taker—from 12 yards out, he must score, or he will be vilified. The hopes and fortunes of his team, his coach, and his nation is on his shoulders as the penalty taker walks up to the spot. Sports psychologists have also studied the high levels of stress players feel as they wait for their turn—unlike a normal penalty during a match, the shootout’s waiting-in-queue feels like lining up for the executioner’s bullet.
Coaches try various methods to try and gain some advantage in case of a shootout. One method that is a complete failure is introducing a new player in the dying stages of extra time with the exclusive purpose of taking a penalty. A fascinating Opta stat shows that 8 of the last 10 players to be subbed in after the 115th minute at Euros or World Cups missed their penalty in the shootout that followed.
That held true for the Germany-Paraguay game, where Paraguay’s veteran defender Fabian Balbuena came on in the last seconds of extra time and then missed his penalty. It happened again in the Netherlands Morocco game, where Justine Kluivert, subbed in in the final minutes, missed his penalty.
Before the age of technical data, players mostly scored taking powerful shots to whichever area of the goal they preferred, with a simple disguise on it—shaping their body one way, shooting the other way. To compensate for the limits of human reflexes, goalkeepers have to commit to the side they want to dive to milliseconds before the ball is struck, making their decision on the visual cues they pick up from the penalty taker—the angle of the run-up, the body shape, etc.
With reams of data available now on the historical penalties taken by a player, goalkeepers don’t rely only on instinct and visual clues anymore. They study patterns instead. A famous example is England’s Jordan Pickford, whose extensive data sheet on penalty takers, taped to his water bottle, helped him save crucial penalties during the shootout in a match against Switzerland at Euro 2024. The sheet contained instructions on each Swiss player—dive left, dive right, hold, etc. AKANJI: DIVE LEFT, said the sheet about Swiss defender Manuel Akanji. Pickford dove left and saved Akanji’s shot.
Rudraneil Sengupta is the author of The Beast Within, a detective novel set in Delhi.
Faced with this new reality, penalty takers came up with a trick of their own—the stutter. Run up to the ball, break the rhythm of the run right at the end with one or a series of false steps, hoping to confuse the keeper. The keeper commits, fooled by the feint. The penalty taker sees which direction the keeper is going and slots the ball in the other direction. That’s the idea.
Except keepers have a counterstrategy of their own. Confuse the kick-taker with intimidating, jerky movements, without committing to the dive. Now the kicker, whose shot is dependent on which way the goalkeeper moves, is bamboozled.
Argentina’s Emiliano Martinez has become a legendary shot-stopper using exactly this technique. Morocco’s Bono became an overnight sensation with his crazy movements during the 2022 World Cup, where he doomed Spain to a loss without a single penalty scored in their Round of 16 knockout match shootout.
At this World Cup, Bono picked up from where he left off in 2022, confounding the Dutch penalty takers. He did his signature double-fake against Kluivert, a step to his left, then to his right, and back to his left—overwhelmed by this flood of information, the Dutch striker, stuttering up to the ball, missed the target. Bono did this for every penalty, making two of the Dutch players miss and saving one. The only two Dutch players to score, Teun Koopmeiners and Wout Weghorst, don’t have the goalkeeper-dependent stutter approach. They both shot hard and true, aiming at their preferred spots, and scored.
This “old-fashioned” way is also how Egypt scored a flawless series of penalties to beat Australia and reach the Round of 16 for the first time. The Australians kept it simple too, but were undone by nerves—Harry Soutar sent his shot, the opening penalty, over the crossbar to immediately put the Aussies on the backfoot. The next five penalties were scored without ceremony, except Mo Salah’s, who chipped in with a Panenka, a high-risk act probably done out of necessity to protect his injured hamstring. Then Australian defender Lucas Herrington, who is 18 but looks about 14, walked up to the spot—why would you entrust a teenager, playing in only his 6th match, to score in such a fraught environment? He hit the crossbar. Poor boy.
Rudraneil Sengupta is the author of The Beast Within, a detective novel set in Delhi.