‘Borderline inhumane’ or ‘psychological thriller’: Penalty shoot-outs explained

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Gut-wrenching; tension-building; you’re on the edge of your seat. Yes, it’s the pointy end of the FIFA Women’s World Cup, halfway through the quarter-finals, and that means penalty shoot-outs.

If you watched USA v Sweden or England v Nigeria, you’ll know all about the emotional roller-coaster of the spot kick lottery.

They occur as a last resort in knockout football, used to find a winner when the teams are tied after 90 minutes of normal play, and – usually – 30 minutes of extra time.

Each team starts with five kicks and the victor is decided by who has the most successful shots. If they’re deadlocked after five, they go to sudden death.

For players and spectators alike, it’s the ultimate pressure moment.

In today’s episode of Newsable, Sky commentator and former Football Fern Anna Green gives hosts Emile Donovan and Imogen Wells some expert insights into how they unfold.

Here’s part of their conversation, edited for clarity.

Emile: A lot of people really hate penalty shoot-outs. They think they are an unfair way of deciding a game and cruel on the players. How do you feel about them?

Anna: I think cruel is the perfect way to describe them. It’s not a reflection of a football match. [You’ve] played 90 minutes, you’ve just gone 30 minutes extra time, and for it to come down to a penalty shoot-out, just seems borderline inhumane. To me that’s so rough, but on the flipside, as a spectator now, it is so exciting.

Imogen: Who decides on the line-up for who’s going to penalty-shoot-it-out?

Anna: That’s super-dependent on the team and the players. What’s important to know is that people definitely practise penalty shoot-outs, no one’s coming in surprised at what’s going on, these are well-rehearsed. People will normally have their lineups set. But also, particularly with the Ferns, it was just on the day, who’s feeling really confident.

Emile: You talk about how you practise them, and I’m really curious about how you do that because the thing that makes such a big difference in a penalty shoot-out is the pressure and the stakes at that kind of time. It seems that would be a difficult thing to manufacture in practice.

Anna: Yeah, 100% I think that’s probably the beauty of it. The beauty of any race at the Olympics is you can train for it all you want but when push comes to shove, how do you deal with that pressure? So yes, you can practise in training all you want, and try and manufacture that experience, but nothing can really prepare you for taking a penalty in a World Cup quarter-final.

Imogen: Tell us a little bit more about the pressure and how difficult they are, because as a spectator they kind of seem a little bit easy, like just shoot the goal. I know it’s not …!!!!

Anna: Yes, you can kick a ball into the corner of the net, but I think … what people love about sport is the unpredictable nature of it. I think things have changed quite considerably now, like the goalkeeper can’t leave their line before the ball’s kicked. I think if you were to watch a penalty shoot-out from 20 years ago it would be really different. Whereas now, there are cameras showing all of that. We saw the USA goalkeeper think she’d saved it, and it was over by, I think they used the reference of [the width of a] cigarette paper.

Emile Donovan: It was point eight of a millimetre, so about the width of a human hair.

Newsable is Stuff’s daily news podcast, wrapping what’s worth talking about from Monday to Saturday. You can listen to today’s full episode by clicking the play icon on the audio player at the top of this story, or by visiting the Newsable homepage.

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