Practice makes perfect, unless you’re an England player in a penalty shootout
England coach Gareth Southgate is already concerned about his side’s chances in a potential penalty shoutout in the World Cup this summer.
Practice makes perfect when it comes to taking penalty kicks — unless you’re England as they prepare for the upcoming World Cup.
Manager Gareth Southgate is currently evaluating new approaches to practicing for penalty shootouts, presumably in response to the fact the Three Lions have been eliminated in six tournaments via shootouts dating back to the 1990 World Cup in Italy.
The BBC reported Wednesday that England’s World Cup-winning Under-17 side had tested the taking of penalties and shared their findings with the senior side as it prepare to open the World Cup in Russia on June 18 against Tunisia.
This includes rating the most eager takers before a match, whether spot-kick takers need practice and ensuring players have several “go-to” penalties to utilize during shootouts. After losing the U-17 European Championship in a shootout against Spain a year ago, the coaching staff tackled six key areas and beat Japan on penalties en route to their World Cup victory this past October.
England’s senior side have lost via shootouts in the knockout rounds of the 1990 (semifinals against West Germany), 1998 (round of 16 against Argentina) and 2006 (quarterfinals against Portugal) World Cups. England have also been eliminated at the Euros (in 1996, 2004 and 2012) via shootouts. It was Southgate’s weak kick, saved by Germany’s Andreas Kopke, that led to England’s elimination at Euro ’92.
At the World Cup level, Germany have been the most successful at penalties (winning all four of the shootouts they’ve been involved in), while England’s zero win percentage has them tied with Mexico and Romania.
Indeed, the failure to succeed in the shootout has led to the team’s futility over the past three decades for a team that only won the World Cup in 1966, before penalty kicks were used to break draws in the knockout stages of tournaments. Penalty-kick tiebreakers were introduced at the World Cup in 1978, but didn’t take place until the 1982 tournament.
The English FA’s head of coach and player development, Matt Crocker, said the U-17 team benefited from changes in their approach to taking penalties in the space of just five months. One of those methods? Not practicing them every day.
“The head coaches meet once a week to discuss things like this and penalties is just one area we are looking to improve,” Crocker told BBC Sport. “Gareth and assistant coach Steve Holland are involved in everything that we do. They sit in on all our meetings.”
Studies show that practice often does make perfect, but only the right type of practice and under pressure.
The FA’s technical director, Dan Ashworth, said last week that players need to take their time before embarking on a kick and emulate Cristiano Ronaldo, who recently scored a penalty kick in stoppage time for Real Madrid’s in the second leg of its Champions League quarterfinal match to advance.
“How are we going to get over that? Because if you’re going to win a World Cup, statistics will tell you that you’ll have to get through one round on penalties. And they had some quite inventive ways of how they dealt with that,” he told London’s The Telegraph. “We’ve got a research team on it to come back with some interesting findings.”
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This mental block has led to some strange moments in the past. Ahead of the 2014 World Cup, England, managed by Ray Hodgson at the time, turned down the possibility of a pre-tournament practice shootout in front of 30,000 fans at Wembley Stadium. The decision to reject holding a public training session would have been an ideal occasion to stage a practice shootout before a crowd. It never mattered in the end after England failed to get out of the group stage in Brazil.
Past England coaches, like Glenn Hoddle and Sven-Goran Eriksson, also subscribed to the philosophy that penalties were a lottery that couldn’t be prepared for. But Ashworth noted that penalties can be broken down and analyzed in advance.
“So, when the whistle goes,” he said, “you’ve got a couple of minutes to prepare, so how do you do that? Where do you do that on the pitch? Who’s involved? Where do you stand? From where do you begin the walk? So, there’s been a little bit of research done to show that English players are quick to the ball when the whistle goes … You look at the other nations, they take a bit more time. There are some interesting patterns. For example, Ronaldo’s self-control is incredible.”
Short of deploying Ronaldo, England could very well suffer a similar fate in Russia from the spot. This is a mental block England will need to overcome if it ever wants to seriously contend for the World Cup.