The young lads have clearly been banging them in too. It's bizarre to criticise Maguire.
Yup, despite the age I always thought it was a bad strategy to have a player who just entered take a penalty... it's like they didn't even had the chance to get into the rhythm of the game and all of a sudden they're in a very tense situation with all the pressure on their shoulders...
Fair point.
What? He didn't make any decisions, just left an exhausted team out to play for pens against an unbeaten 7ft goalkeeper.
He's never taken a penalty in his pro career.
Rashford was fine to take one but he shouldn't have been subbed on ten seconds before the end of the game (nor should Sancho).
Absolutely agree. Southgate said he picked the players.
He didn't make a decision.
Trippier has taken two penalties and missed both. You are not keeping him on the field for another 60 minutes when Italy are on top in case it goes to pens… because he has experience of missing them?
The absolute worst thing you can do is waste your best takers in the first few penalties. Those are the penalties with no pressure. Ideally your 3rd best should be first. The ok guys in the middle. 4 and 5 the two best.
Did I criticise Maguire or his position in the penalty shootout? I think I referred to his penalty as both ‘amazing’ & ‘terrific’.
Having your best penalty takers step up first is normal?
As I said, the biggest problem was the likes of Henderson and Sterling hiding from responsibility in my opinion. Henderson was brought to the tournament to provide leadership and experience. He even demanded a penalty before the tournament started in the warm up game. As for Sterling he's happy to let a centre half and some of the youngest squad players step up before him.
So conceivably, England would have lost without scoring a penalty, with the press than revealing than Maguire and Kane were 4th and 5th? Some master plan.
But again you're looking at just penalties taken in games and not in shootouts and I'd argue there's an important distinction. Also I'd have absolutely left Trippier on if Henderson was coming on - thought England clogged things up by having Hendo and Walker down the right; that quickly became the zone where attacks go to die.
My gut says that this isn't the case - I haven't looked at the data on this but my completely uneducated guess would be that you're probably better having your best taker go 1st, your second best taker go 5th, and your 3rd through 5th best takers arranged from 2-4 so as to alternate between left and right footed takers whenever possible.
I think you're absolutely correct. The order does matter but the amount of pressure on each penalty can change anyway. As you say Maguire at number two had to follow from Belotti who missed so the pressure on him, despite being early in the order, rose significantly.
I seriously doubt the 3 young players miss their penalties if they go 1-3 . Less pressure. Muscle memory more likely to work reproducing training ground results.
They'd still have better odds of winning if he went 5th though. If Saka and Sancho go first there's less chance of them missing. Obviously it can still happen but you want to give your team as good of a chance as possible.
The best way to find out is check out lists of international sides that traditionally do well with penalty shoot outs. Then check who on those lists were statistically the best takers.
That’s one weird theory.
Yeah might have a look at that actually at some point because now I'm curious - off to bed though for now but cheers for the discussion mate!
Perhaps.
I guess the counter argument is that you want to put pressure on the opposition early on (the reason why going first is a historical advantage).
Henderson came off in the last minute.
It's of no advantage whatsoever to lose you best takers first even if you go first. You must ALWAYS assume your opponents will score. So you need stronger takers for the higher pressure penalties.
Ask Ronaldo…. points on the board > games in hand for instance.
