aeneas
1725
More from England’s manager on the penalties. “We were well prepared and obviously started it well, but unfortunately the guys weren’t able to convert tonight. They can’t look at themselves in terms of how they practised because they couldn’t have done any more or anything better.”
I’m absolutely not a fan, but there are a couple of players who have made that sort of hop-skip approach work very well for them.
To me, there’s no substitute for knocking your foot through the ball at maximum pace.
At the end of the day, yes. But it’s also always about the willingness of the players to step up and take responsibility. It’s hard to believe that Saka would be taking the last kick if any of the senior players (including Kane) had told Southgate that they’d take it.
Though Kane is a little bit excused, since he takes the first kick (which is also important to get a good start. But really - with the kickers England chose, it’s hard to understand why Maguire didn’t take the first, and Kane (or Rashford, who is a regular taker) the last.
One of the rule of thumb for kicks, is that you should take your time before kicking. Your chances of scoring go up, the longer you wait before taking the kick. So that may play into it a little bit.
The hop, skip, tiptoing approach always looks dumb when you miss, though.
Bit of an understatement, playing at home in a cup final and having only 34% of the ball is just awful. Hardly any attempts on goal either.
Waiting for the keeper to dive and then put it in the other corner. Theory being if the keeper has dived it doesn’t have to be anywhere near perfect just in the other half of the goal. Hugely risky unless practiced to perfection and presents the taker with a problem if he gets to the ball and the keeper hasn’t moved, the taker essentially has to put it right into the corner because he can’t get the power on the shot, this often leads to the player screwing it wide or taking a weaker penalty that is in the corner but the keeper can reach.
See Jorghino’s versus Spain for how to do it. See Rashford and Jorghino tonight for what can go wrong.
Tom Cruise paid the England team a visit yesterday and gave them a pep talk. And he was high-fiving with David Beckham after that early goal.
WTF, Tom?
They don’t need Meghan Markle.
What do the three last penalty takers for England have in common? I don’t want to be Rashford, Saka, or Sancho’s phone or social media accounts for the next couple of weeks.
This is fixed. Own Goal clearly robbed.
One final remark: basing your penalty takers on how they do at practice as Southgate claims to have done, seems dumb based on what we know about succeeding at PKs.
You can practice PKs all you like. You cannot practice standing there after 120 mins, with 60K spectators watching, and knowing that your entire career may end up defined by what happens in the next 20 seconds. That the hopes and dreams of your entire nation rests on your shoulders. Southgate, of all people, should know that.
The pressure in that moment is inhuman. Putting players on for the sole purpose of kicking (i.e., Sancho, Rashford) also ramps up the pressure for those players - they basically have just one job in the game. It is especially inhuman for those players expected to carry the team (which is why the star players are often the ones to miss). But you still want to have your experienced, quality players up there. Because even if the pressure is high, those are the players who have stood in high-pressure situations before.
It’s just terrible man management. I was pretty sure one of either Rashford or Sancho would miss. And when Saka stepped forward, I was sure Italy was going to win even before he shot.
A couple of points. I remember teenage Michael Owen being a fearless penalty taker. I don’t buy the age thing really; youth often has a blasé arrogance where older athletes seem to think themselves into trouble.
And the idea that Saka missed because he’s young isn’t really a hypothesis based on evidence in the first place, is it?
While penalties taken in the final are yes, obviously, not the same as practice penalties, what are we saying here? That there’s no point practising? And if a manager isn’t supposed to take practice performance into account, I don’t know what selection tools he has left! He’ll have one or two professional club penalty takers in his team, but for the rest of the lineup, what? Roll some dice?
There’s so much randomness in penalties anyway (the randomness of all the tactical guessing, plus the randomness of testing of psychological unknowables at the moment of truth). In the end this all seems like post hoc reasoning.
An interesting statistical breakdown of the match:
Nothing earth shattering here. Merely reinforcing the observation that parking the bus for an hour-and-a-half is not the best way to win matches.
Agreed.
He will and he is upright enough to take responsibility
And I was right.
I stopped watching after the penalties, so missed this whole statement.
That’s over the whole game though.
What are the stats for the first half versus the 2nd?
Ahh I see the post before me.
NI1
1745
I might be missing a game or two, but I think all teams that took the first penalty ended up winning the game in this tournament?
