I got some time to watch Argentina - Germany quarterfinals for the last 45 minutes.
The 90 minutes is up, you’ve had extra time. Only penalties can decide the winner. Can you keep your cool and win, or will you crumble under the pressure?
It was Jens Lehmann for Germany , the hero showing resilience and courage . Ask Ayala and Cambiasso who must bear the cross of Argentina’s shattered World Cup dreams. Um, no, really, they shouldn’t have, really... yet in this game called heartbreak, the loser can never be criticised, only consoled.
Switzerland and Ukraine produced probably the WORST World Cup game in history last night in a 0-0 draw that was boring, uneventful, and downright rubbish.
There comes the decider through penalty shootout. One door opened for other team to go out ! Its swiss ! So what is penalty shootout ?
Its called sudden death , officially referred to as kicks from the penalty mark used to decide which team progresses to the next stage of a tournament following a tied result in a soccer game . Kicks during a shootout should not be confused with penalty kicks, which are similar, but are part of normal play during a match and governed by different rules .
Teams take turns, the winner being the one with the most number of successful goals after a specified number of attempts. If the result is still tied, the shootout usually continues on a "goal-for-goal" basis, with the teams taking shots alternately, the winner being the one to score a goal that is unmatched by the other team.
The goal is 8 yards wide and 8 feet high. Football is a simple game. Except when one has to beat the goalkeeper from 12 yards. Here, Diego Maradona, Roberto Baggio, Franco Baresi, Zico, Michel Platini and Socrates have failed.
A penalty seems easy. That’s why it is so difficult . Penalty Shootout brings all the thrills and suspense . Its not good for our hearts either , seriously one has to hold the nerves.
Germany, though it lost the first major international shootout to Czechoslovakia in the 1976 European Championship final, when Uli Hoeness missed from the spot, has a 3-0 tie-breaker record in the World Cup, apart from a semifinal win over England in Euro 96. In fact, no German has missed in the penalty shootout of a major tournament since Uli Stielike’s shot was saved by Jean-Luc Ettori in the 1982 semifinal against France and he became the first man to miss in a World Cup penalty shootout.
Italy have reason to be afraid. Very afraid. Like the 1994 final, the 1990 semifinal loss to Argentina on home soil and the 1998 quarterfinal eviction by France cannot be relegated to the oblique personal columns of newspapers. Death by shootout demands obit-space.
England have nothing to feel good about their metatarsals either, having lost four of their past seven World Cup and European Championship shootouts, including the Euro 96 and 1990 World Cup semifinals, both to Germany.
A common complaint of penalty shootouts is that they do not fairly determine the better team in overall play, but only the better team in the one, rather narrow, discipline of taking penalty shots.
Occasionally, football is statistics. But with statistics, you don’t always get the ending that you want. Is the shootout a lottery then? That is the question of questions, and everybody has his own answer.