On Penalties

[Hoop Blah]

I'm pretty sure that's what i said

Fair enough. I thought the main gist of your post was that you couldn't replicate it etc, but I might've failed to register the bit about we should still practise.

Penalties shootouts are more high pressure and totally binary. You either score or you don't (potentially costing your nation the world cup). I'm just unaware how you can replicate such pressure. Make it a million pound a penalty bet in training, track the amount of penalties scored in training and make it known that this will effect your chance of selection....dunno

I think you have to accept that you can't replicate that pressure. What you have to do is give yourself the best chance of handling it by having your technique as well drilled as possible so that you can fall back on it under pressure. It's the reason golfers and snooker players practise for so many hours so that their technique almost looks after itself under pressure.

[Ouroboros]

Yeah. Don't know why so much is being made of that point.

Of course you can't replicate the pressure. Does that mean there's no point in trying to replicate the conditions as closely as possible so that the real experience is as familiar as it can plausibly be? Does that mean there's no point in trying to establish and perfect your preferred technique so that when the pressure hits you are as well-drilled as possible?

[Ian Royal]

Yeah, the trick is to drill it until you're technique is as close to perfect as possible, so that you're confident in yourself and have a mindset and physicality you can drop into blocking out some of the pressure. Then when you take it, your technique is only minimally lessened by those factors and it was so good in the first place that it doesn't significantly harm your execution.

Make the basics so familiar that it's muscle memory and requires no thought and you've got far less to go wrong.

[Maguire]

Did you miss the point about Wilkinson being able to hit a post 8 times out of 10? Practice enough and you'll be able to hit the near unsaveable spot with good regularity.

What's "good" regularity? 8 times out of ten? That means you're missing a penalty every time you get in a shoot-out.

[Hoop Blah]

Did you miss the point about Wilkinson being able to hit a post 8 times out of 10? Practice enough and you'll be able to hit the near unsaveable spot with good regularity.

What's "good" regularity? 8 times out of ten? That means you're missing a penalty every time you get in a shoot-out.

To be fair, that 8/10 times was hitting one goal post from 40 yards or something. When you're actually going to be aiming at a target of 8 yards I think the results would be pretty comfortable.

Translating that into a penalty taker being able to hit the postage stamp or a specific small target within a goal from 12 yards. I'd expect them to be able to do it, under no pressure and no keeper, after working on that technique for a decent amount of time about 9 times out of 10 at least. When you throw in the variables of having a keeper trying to stop you, maybe using a couple of variations on your penalties and having to disguise which one your using then a penalty success rate of 8 or 9 out of ten seems pretty good still.

Germany have an 85% penatly conversation rate from their 33 shoot out penalties. Englands is 68% from 31 and Argentina 80% from 50.

[Royalclapper]

A lot of the points just can't be dismissed by saying something as simplistic as practice makes perfect.

Shock horror, but the truth is some players simply don't have the confidence to take a penalty in the shoot outs. You can slate them all you like but that's why you see some unlikely candidates lining up who you have less hope in them scoring, and yet they are sturdy enough to replace someone who's seemingly a better choice and doesn't want to take one.

Presuming the current England squad & upcoming World Cup is the focus of all this, who are the likely penalty scorers and missers should England be in yet another shoot out?

Most likely scorers: Rooney, Gerrard, Lampard, Lambert. The rest could all easily miss, and that's banking on the only 4 solid one's scoring. Then you have to reckon in those who won't want to take one no matter how much they all practice.

[PieEater]

Read the bit in the post about TCUP.

Adding some pressure for you not to keep your teammates behind after training also helps and stops your excuse of being shit at taking them.

I also think there's merit in not just practising penalties, but practising penalty A,B,C routines in different points of the goal but all with the same run up.

It has to be better than the current shambolic situation.

[PistolPete]

Massive fan of that article - thanks for posting.

Where was it from?

[stealthpapes]

Guardian, but excerpt from Twelve Yards: the Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty by Ben Lyttleton.

[Ouroboros]

Thanks to the fact that we weren't required to against Spain in 96, we have never scored 5 out of 5 in any penalty shoot-out.

Would be a good start, wouldn't it?

[Bandini]

Germany have an 85% penatly conversation rate from their 33 shoot out penalties.

We need to talk about Kevin (Prince-Boateng)

[Ian Royal]

Did you miss the point about Wilkinson being able to hit a post 8 times out of 10? Practice enough and you'll be able to hit the near unsaveable spot with good regularity.

What's "good" regularity? 8 times out of ten? That means you're missing a penalty every time you get in a shoot-out.

How exactly is it that you think not hitting a point six inches across 2 in 10 times means you're missing a penalty every shoot-out?

And if you've got 5 people on your team who do that, you've 5 80% chances of scoring a guaranteed penalty even assuming you have to hit it into that 6" sweet spot to score. Which you don't.

The point about there being a goalkeeper is a fair one, obviously the approach needs to be adapted for the situation. But the point is, practice penalties and you'll become good at them. As already suggested, 2-5 variants with maybe 2 different run ups should take care of becoming too predictable should that be an issue.

[Hoop Blah]

Having just watched the u17s score 4 out of 4 very well taken penalties to beat the Dutch, perhaps their preparation can help Hodgson with his, just in case!

[Maguire]

Shock horror, but the truth is some players simply don't have the confidence to take a penalty in the shoot outs. You can slate them all you like but that's why you see some unlikely candidates lining up who you have less hope in them scoring, and yet they are sturdy enough to replace someone who's seemingly a better choice and doesn't want to take one

Paul Ince - bottled taking one completely in the shoot-out against Germany in '96. Stepped up against Argentina in '98 and promptly missed.

[sandman]

Having just watched the u17s score 4 out of 4 very well taken penalties to beat the Dutch, perhaps their preparation can help Hodgson with his, just in case!

Basically England found a country that are even worse at Penalties than they are.

[P!ssed Off]

My mate's doing his uni Maths dissertation on World Cup penalty shoot-outs.

Speaking of England-Netherlands penalty shoot-outs, today was justice for the 2007 European U21 final, that had a mad shoot-out ending 13-12 to them.

[Ian Royal]

Having just watched the u17s score 4 out of 4 very well taken penalties to beat the Dutch, perhaps their preparation can help Hodgson with his, just in case!

Basically England found a country that are even worse at Penalties than they are.

Clearly you didn't see the U17s pens.

[Whatevs]

My mate's doing his uni Maths dissertation on World Cup penalty shoot-outs.

Speaking of England-Netherlands penalty shoot-outs, today was justice for the 2007 European U21 final, that had a mad shoot-out ending 13-12 to them.

is that where they forced an injured Taylor (iirc) to take one even though he was struggling to walk?

[P!ssed Off]

My mate's doing his uni Maths dissertation on World Cup penalty shoot-outs.

Speaking of England-Netherlands penalty shoot-outs, today was justice for the 2007 European U21 final, that had a mad shoot-out ending 13-12 to them.

is that where they forced an injured Taylor (iirc) to take one even though he was struggling to walk?

Yeah, and then he slotted it home anyway. Heroic stuff.

I've just realised it was actually the semi-final, not the final that we lost in.

[sandman]

Having just watched the u17s score 4 out of 4 very well taken penalties to beat the Dutch, perhaps their preparation can help Hodgson with his, just in case!

Basically England found a country that are even worse at Penalties than they are.

Clearly you didn't see the U17s pens.

I did see them. I also saw the Dutch senior team team go out of a World Cup semi final in '98 on penalties and then totally screw one up a couple of years later against Italy. Hence the tongue in cheek, with having quickly looked it up a bit of fact, comment about the Dutch being even worse than the English at penalties.