Bailey Peacock-Farrell is ready to do everything he can to spook Slovakia if tomorrow night’s Euro 2020 showdown goes to a dreaded penalty shootout.
The Burnley keeper got inside the heads of Bosnian players prior to helping Northern Ireland win a dramatic shootout in last month’s playoff semi-final in Sarajevo.
Barcelona star Miralem Pjanic was so irritated after scoring his penalty that he kicked the stray ball at the 24-year-old keeper and complained to the referee.
“I was really surprised with Pjanic’s reaction,” said Peacock-Farrell. “There wasn’t too much said with that one, but I was making myself a bit of a nuisance.
“He was maybe a bit annoyed that I had saved his free-kick earlier in the game.. but yeah, there are always some mind games and I quite enjoy that.
“As a goalkeeper I try to put as much pressure on the taker as possible, try and fill the goal, maybe have a conversation with him, play some mind games.
“I’m a fairly calm person in and out of football and I’ll be prepared for a penalty shootout if it comes to that.”
Peacock-Farrell says goalkeeper coach Steve Harper and assistant coach Austin MacPhee deserve credit for researching potential penalty takers ahead of a shootout.
“Thankfully, I don’t have to do the mad amount of hours they have since the Bosnia game,” he said.
“They’ll collect and compress all the data – this guy will go here, this guy will go there – into an hour’s video here, an hour’s video there and it’ll be drip fed to me before Thursday.”
Peacock-Farrell, who made his Burnley debut in September, is one of the younger players in the current squad who wasn’t part of Northern Ireland’s Euro 2016 adventure.
And the Darlington-born keeper, who was also courted by England before committing to the Green and White Army in 2018, is eager to put that right tomorrow night.
“That’s the dream,” he said. “To reach a major tournament would mean so much to me and being able to do it for the first time would be an amazing feeling.
“In the camps I’ve been on with Northern Ireland so far, there has always been a conversation or memory that pops up about Euro 2016.
“You’re listening and taking note of those memories, but hopefully we can add some of our own to the list for future camps.
“Hopefully I can be having the same conversations about the Euro finals in 2021.”
