Why do a Panenka?
The penalty is the embodiment of the dread of choice. As Andrew Anthony notes in his book On Penalties, “Sport is largely an intuitive endeavour which rewards honed instinct […] With a football penalty, though, the taker is presented with a genuine decision.” The kicker is removed from his usual learnt improvisation and thrust into a situation where he must consciously plot his next move, which will have a consequence far greater than most. Moreover, the extra thinking time allowed by this scenario lulls the taker into contemplating the unknowable variable and the root of the dread—the goalkeeper.
This can become a tortuous psychological game, as related in the movie The Goalkeeper’s Fear of the Penalty (and as quoted in On Penalties):
The goalkeeper wonders into which corner it will go. If he knows the opposing player, he knows the kicker’s favourite corner, but the kicker knows he knows. So the goalkeeper wonders if he might choose the other corner this time. But the kicker knows that, too, so maybe he’ll go for his favourite. And so on and so on.
And some players can’t handle it. Nor can some managers, come to that. Fear rules. It is seen as acceptable managerial practice to forgo the responsibility of choosing which players will take the kicks in a shootout, reflecting a belief that the penalty is guided by some force beyond anyone’s control. Chance, perhaps; penalties are frequently explained away as a lottery. What they are really about is playing the game on terms which are not entirely the taker’s, but those of the goalkeeper and of the taker’s powers of decision-making. And how can you trust either?
Antonín Panenka’s penalty, which won Czechoslovakia the 1976 European Championship, was a challenge to the received notion of penalties. Or maybe a kind of pre-emptive challenge to today’s received notion of penalties: that you can’t practise them, that they are governed by some capricious deity. Because here’s a question whose answer I don’t know but am fairly sure I could guess—did the penalty neurosis exist as pandemically back then as it does now, with decades of shootout-induced paranoia and superstition behind us?
In any case, the kick had, in effect, been planned and honed for some time prior to that momentous night. Panenka had noticed a problem: he could never beat his goalkeeper clubmate in their regular training-ground penalty competitions. He pondered on the matter and detected a flaw in the goalkeeper’s approach: the keeper always started to dive a beat before the kick. So Panenka determined that a chip down the centre would, if well enough disguised, do the trick. It did, and did again in some friendlies and a couple of domestic league games, presumably unbeknownst to the rest of the world, and certainly to Sepp Maier. Panenka’s achievement was to subvert the dread of choice by finding a new option—one that Maier, and therefore the dread, were unaware of, and powerless to counteract.
It was like the will of god. I was one thousand percent certain that I would take the penalty in that way and that I would score.
Subsequent attempts to replicate Panenka’s kick miss the point. What Panenka did was to pull off the trick of appearing to put a live round in the chamber before firing the gun at his temple, when in fact he had done nothing of the sort. It subverted the game by virtue of its certainty, which came from its originality. These qualities are now gone from the kick. It has become part of the repertoire—it is the Panenka, something the possibility of which any decent keeper is prepared for. It pretends to be the ultimate display of defiance: defiance of the norm, defiance of the dread. It fails on both counts: the former because it is a part of the norm and no longer shocks; the latter because it actually acknowledges and re-affirms the goalkeeper’s centrality to the act—it pretends to thumb its nose at the goalkeeper’s game despite being born out of it. Its flourish is utterly superficial; a firm shot down the centre of goal would be just as, perhaps more, effective. It is a stylistic empty gesture, as much a cliché as the pointless stepover, or the penalty nervously blasted over the bar, for that matter. It’s as lame as reciting the “royale with cheese” scene with your friends and thinking it’s still the zenith of cool.
The Panenka can still be potent if circumstances allow, like how a stock chord progression can be turned into something beautiful. But it’s a pastiche more often than not. Even Zinedine Zidane’s penalty in the 2006 World Cup final wound up being stylistically sheepish, both with it having been so nearly botched and with the subsequent momentary uncertainty as to whether it had crossed the line.
And the Panenka’s hollowness is shown up when it is botched. In the case of Dimitar Berbatov’s miss against Everton in the FA Cup semi-final, it only served to exaggerate the caricature that threatens to define him.
In missing the point of the ur-Panenka, the neo-Panenka also misses a wider one. As long as the Laws of the Game contain that pesky clause which allows the goalkeeper to try and stop a penalty, it is impossible to completely avoid playing the goalkeeper’s game. But the closest thing to taking the keeper out of the equation is not, any longer, by means of a Panenka, but by hitting a firm shot into the corner of the goal. It is difficult to perfect, but if it’s hit well, it’s unsavable. The tragedy of Javier Casquero’s miss against Real Madrid lay not just in its consequence—that is, costing Getafe a victory at the Bernabéu and dealing a blow to the club’s hopes for Primera División survival. It also resided in Casquero’s succumbing to the dread. Here was someone who “can hit a ball like Hotshot Hamish”, having his brain short-circuit. He choked. He, to borrow once more from Anthony, “returned to first principles and started thinking”. The Panenka has become so routine that it seemed like a good idea at the time.
It’s the thinking, the “good idea at the time”, that does for the penalty taker. The best way to avoid the dread of choice is to make the decision long before you step on the pitch. The best way to circumvent the goalkeeper’s power is to take a kick he can’t do a thing about. Panenka understood that. That’s true subversion. That’s true swagger.
Fredorrarci is the author of the ingenious Sport Is a TV Show.
Read More: The Unwritten Peter Handke
by Fredorrarci · April 26, 2009
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Awesome post! I know very little about soccer, but I think I understand this fairly well. Is this in any way relatable to the onside punt in American football? Was there a specific famous moment that was first used as well?
Great post! Now that I’m crying about kids singing Coldplay, I’m going to have to pull out the ol’ Langley Schools record and spend this rainy day listening to that kid always being late with the crash cymbal.
This is a tremendous piece of writing. I wish more people would realize that aesthetics have meaning.
I missed a goal while I was reading this post. Turns out it was a Kaka penalty, low and solid to the right corner.
As for the art of ‘hitting a firm shot into the corner of the goal’ take a look at Kevin Pressman’s effort here at 1 min 33 secs.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YHk3Pk-FxgU
Penalties are indeed a mind game. But good penalty keeper and kickers avoid entering too far in it. And it’s the keeper best moment : if he fails, it’s expected, but if he saves, he’s hero. So, basically, the keeper has the mental advantage in it. Most of the times, the loser of the mind games is the kicker. The scary face of Oliver Kahn was a great technical weapon. He was only making theatre, but if the kicker takes attention to him, he would already lose some of his moral.
All the more when the kicker has the burden of the being the team leader, cause that makes him think too much. See Baggio in WC final ’94, Terry in last CL final, Drogba in the African cup semi-final ’06. They all failed because, as team leaders, they had no right to fail.
On the opposite, see Henry or Trezeguet in the ’98 WC quarter final. Two 19 years old young lads, smiling and relaxed. Not the ones we would think as potential penalty kickers. But they both scored, cause they had not much pressure.
On the opposite, the same Trezeguet, 8 years later, had a very bad tournament. When it was his turn to kick for the WC final, it was his only way to save his performance. So he missed…
Most of the time, you can guess who will miss by looking at the player’s attitude just before he kicks.
Coming back to Zidane’s penalty. He was such an accurate player that you should not exclude the possibility that he hit the bar on purpose. If that’s the case, it would be a real “panenka” moment, in its own right.
Great post, although I give Zizou’s PK a bit more credit – he did a fantastic job, like Panenka, of using his head, lowered shoulder, and turned knee to deceive Buffon.
That type of PK actually defies the principles of powerful kicking because you can feel the tug at your ACL and MCL in the knee – your leg bends as you “mishit” the ball. I have some friends who take PKs with the point of the toe, also against “power principles”, because it produces a double bend that flatfoots the keeper.
But yeah, Zizou’s PK against Buffon revealed the dilemma of decision-making withe added element of time – he had taken a PK against Ricardo in teh semifinal where he blasted it low to the corner. Surely Buffon was expecting the same…
Nonsense. The aesthetic of the panenka is subjugated by the abandonment of credibility and the risks taken therein, attempting such a kick accepting the criticism that might come from a writer such as yourself. When a PK taker’s shot is saved by a goalie who guessed properly, he takes none of the blame; the keeper becomes the primary act, not the striker.
Even if the taker misses high or wide, he retains his role as the primary actor. It is only by chipping the ball — an act which would allow, literally, a mannequin to save the penalty — that he subjugates himself and, at the same time, opens himself up to all possible critiques.
I loved the post, and it’s sublime writing and philosophical assertions.
However, just like goals seen on youtube compilations are void of the game’s significance, you must take a “panenka” penalty in the same way, with relation to it’s game and ocasion.
Back in 2004, in the classic England Vs. Portugal quarter-final, the game went to a penalty shoot-out.
We’ll remember the Beckham miss, and the penalty scored by Ricardo, the goalkeeper, after stopping one himself, with no gloves. What people forget is that the penalty shoot-out had been already decided earlier. Helder Postiga, that had endured a awful year in Tottenham colors and scored the tying goal, scores with a “panenka” penalty (at 2:40 in this video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0zK1LFujtsE ).
From that moment on, everyone in the portuguese camp had a huge confidence boost. The lightness of the gesture, it’s playfulness, it’s disrespect for the occasion made everything seem less stressful. It made it easier to win the game, and that is the objective.
Thanks, all.
p4limpsest:
Is it possible to have an onside punt? I thought the rules would disallow that. Anyway, I’ll leave your question for someone better acquainted with American football than I am.
Scotian, Elliot:
If Zidane meant it, it would trump Panenka, that’s for sure. Much as I’d love to believe it was deliberate, though, I just can’t…
I should point out that I didn’t mean to pick on Zidane’s kick or anything. I guess it came to mind because it’s such a famous example, and because it occupied some middle ground in between success and failure (erring on the side of success, because it crossed the line, after all).
Bill:
You’re making my point for me. Is the taker’s attempting to take charge, trying to become the primary actor, not a greater, braver thing to do than to subjugate himself, as you put it? Is it so admirable to play on the railway line?
Joao Jorge:
Excellent point. I did allude to that with the link to the Killian Brennan penalty (hello, League of Ireland fans!), and the Postiga example is even better. I don’t know how much this undercuts the argument. But I still feel that so many Panenkas, even successful ones, are like someone sprinting across a street as a car approaches: you risked your life, you didn’t get killed, but you’re still an idiot.
mafu:
Thanks for the link. Now that’s a penalty!
Is there someone keeping stats of all penalty taken at high level, so we can finally decide which kick is more efficient ?
It seems you’re a proponent of the strong kick in one of the goal’s upper corners. Sure, it’s hardly stoppable, but very easy to miss. England got out of tournaments many times this way.
I’m more for the lower corner kick. It’s less difficult to shoot, so you don’t have to concentrate too much on your kick, and put yourself under less pressure.
This is my first visit to this blog and I am VERY impressed by the look and by the writing. Great article. Thanks.
It’s a question of what you perceive bravery to be. I disagree with this notion, I guess, and your point.
You cannot have an onside punt in American football, but an onside kickoff is always allowed, and always has been as far as I know. I can think of no “watershed moment” for it, just that it’s been done for a very long time. The rule about it is, though, that the ball must travel ten yards or be touched by an opposing teams player before the kicking team can recover it and maintain possession.
Also, thanks for the article, well done!
Here’s some recent penalty mindgames from backup goalie Pinto of Barcelona.
Shake the penalty-taker’s hand, and then tell him which way you’re going to dive.
Penalty taker nods acknowledgement.
They both go that way. 🙂
It reminded me of the host in Slumdog Millionaire. “Here’s the answer!”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsXCWpsC5YY
The art of deception is a proven technique across all realms of competition. Whether it be on the pitch, court, sandlot, poker table, etc…not that this is a revolutionary statement by any means. In my opinion it is, in fact, brave to “panenka” the goalie. Not so much in its most primal…I’m the alpha male and you’re not…sense of the word, but more of a refined…I could go upper corner, but choose to exploit your machismo instead…type of brave. It’s saying that, in this moment, I’m going to beat you by working smarter not harder. Athletes who can do both are truly world class.
You should try to extend this essay to define the borders between Panenkas and lobs. I think Totti shows best how blurred the two apparently (and ‘legally’) different situations can be.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oev5maQIVas
Totti is one of my favorite PK takers because early on in his career he preferred the chip, then went through a few years of low drilled shots, and now is totally unpredictable.
@p4limpsest It’s called football