Mental approach holds key to penalty success

By Mitch Phillips

VIENNA (Reuters) - Penalty shoot-outs have become part and parcel of tournament football yet some coaches and players still seem to consider defeat by spot-kicks as no defeat at all.

That was certainly the approach of Italy coach Roberto Donadoni after his side lost to Spain in their Euro 2008 quarter-final on Sunday, their fifth major tournament shoot-out defeat.

"We can walk away with our heads held high...I don't have a reason (to resign) we only lost a game on penalties," he said, though his approach could be coloured by his own miss when Italy "only lost on penalties" to Argentina in their 1990 World Cup semi-final in Naples.

England also have a woeful penalties record, yet losing managers and even some of the guilty penalty-takers have treated their departure from tournaments as something to smile about.

Fans thought otherwise though and there was an angry backlash when Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle and Gareth Southgate, all shoot-out missers, made light of their failures in a TV pizza advert.

Germany, who profited from those misses in the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup and Euro 96, seem to take a far more professional approach and you will not hear them describing the ultimate test of nerve and technique as a lottery.

Having lost their first taste of one to Czechoslovakia to decide the 1976 European championship final they have subsequently won five in a row and have not missed a kick since 1982.

Certainly the mental approach is key. Part of the attraction of watching a shootout is trying to identify who looks "up for it" and who looks as if they would rather be anywhere else at that moment as they trudge the "walk of truth" from centre circle huddle to the loneliest place on earth.