02-07-2018, 12:18
Penalty kicks are an horrendous way to decide anything. In a team game penos place the entire responsibility on two individuals - the penalty taker and the goalkeeper and this turns them into targets or heroes for fans and even their own team. (If Gareth Southgate manages England to a 5-0 win the World Cup Final it will just about expiate his lasting memorial as the man who missed the penalty. The fact that he was the man who had the guts to step forward whilst the other non-penalty takers hesitated has been expunged from history.)
Those who have never kept goal observe that goalkeepers are absolved from blame in the shoot-out. Complete obllocks! ALL goalies always think they can make the save and every goal scored is a small disaster for them. David De Gea knows better than anyone he should have stopped at least TWO Russian penalties (at least).
Those who think penalty shoot-outs are a wonderful spectacle should participate in one. Having done so just at amateur level I can report that taking off all your clothes at the check-out in Waitrose is the slightly more attractive option.
AND for those who advocate this as a way to settle FA Cup ties ........ it skews the whole game if a much weaker team assesses early on that its best chance is to arrive at penos, like Russia. Nobody can tell me that with the Spanish obsessed with ticcy-takkying like Pete Seager and the Russians relying on one good Russian, a Spaniard, a Brazilian 'n' a surfeit of desire, that this was anything like a good game.
How to settle a game without penos? After Extra Time, if the teams are still level, restart with each team reduced by two players, after five more minutes play remove another player, after a further five same again, continue removing players until one team scores. Fascinating tactics would develop. We could call it DISPLACEMENT TIME .......
Those who have never kept goal observe that goalkeepers are absolved from blame in the shoot-out. Complete obllocks! ALL goalies always think they can make the save and every goal scored is a small disaster for them. David De Gea knows better than anyone he should have stopped at least TWO Russian penalties (at least).
Those who think penalty shoot-outs are a wonderful spectacle should participate in one. Having done so just at amateur level I can report that taking off all your clothes at the check-out in Waitrose is the slightly more attractive option.
AND for those who advocate this as a way to settle FA Cup ties ........ it skews the whole game if a much weaker team assesses early on that its best chance is to arrive at penos, like Russia. Nobody can tell me that with the Spanish obsessed with ticcy-takkying like Pete Seager and the Russians relying on one good Russian, a Spaniard, a Brazilian 'n' a surfeit of desire, that this was anything like a good game.
How to settle a game without penos? After Extra Time, if the teams are still level, restart with each team reduced by two players, after five more minutes play remove another player, after a further five same again, continue removing players until one team scores. Fascinating tactics would develop. We could call it DISPLACEMENT TIME .......