The penalty kick.
Whether you love it or hate it, the fact that it may decide the World Cup really riles people up.
I can atest to the difficulty of the PK, having only mastered my goalies’ movement on the Wii on the final shot to secure a victory for La Furia Roja in my basement.
Here are some other facts about PKs:
- Before FIFA adopted the penalty-kick format in 1970, in major tournaments in which a complete replay was not possible, ties were often broken by drawing lots.
- The penalty shootout made its World Cup debut during African qualifying in 1977, when Tunisia beat Morocco.
- The first shootout in the championship tournament came five years later when West Germany bested France in the semifinals.
- It was used to decide the champion in 1994, when Brazil beat Italy, and 2006, when Italy beat France.
Germany excels
Along the way some teams have learned to excel at penalty kicks. For example, Germany, which plays Uruguay in the third-place game today in Port Elizabeth, has not lost a shootout in a major competition in 34 years.
No German player has missed a single shot in that time.
England not so much
England, on the other hand, has lost six of seven matches that were decided on penalties.
Here’s an excerpt from a story by L.A. Times reporter Kevin Baxter:
Soccer, after all, is a sport in which the clock never stops and the players and the ball are in constant motion. Yet if two teams remain tied after 90 minutes of regulation time and 30 minutes of extra time, all that becomes irrelevant.
Then the ball is placed, immobile, 12 yards from the goal, and everyone but the striker and the keeper do nothing but stand around and watch.
Read the full story, “In World Cup, penalty shootouts kick up controversy,” on the jump.
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