1) Peter Devine for Lancaster City v Whitley Bay (HFS Northern Premier League Division One Cup final, 1991)
Everyone has different penalty customs. In the Joy of Six’s primary school, the defending side would stand behind the goalline to chorus “naked women, naked women” even though no one had the slightest notion of why that image might be distracting. But it’s the thought that counts, and when it comes to potential embarrassment of an opponent, anything’s worth trying, because actual embarrassment of an opponent is hilarious.
Happily, football has provided a rich tapestry of the same, each with their own flavour: take Teddy Sheringham’s Manchester United debut, for example. He had committed the crime against humanity which is leaving a good job for a better one – but this was ill-received at White Hart Lane, which is where he was sent on the opening weekend of the season.
There, he was showered with hatred, until, just before the hour, United won a penalty in front of the home support. Sheringham asserted himself firmly, stepped up calmly, and shot nonchalantly, planting an expert’s sidefooter into the corner before wheeling away to blow kisses, cup ears and flick Vs. Except he didn’t, did he, he slammed it against the post and slammed the rebound over the bar, to hoots of mirth and derision. He had taken on the crowd and lost, and the world was all the better for it.
Of course the other examples of the humiliating miss are many. Take Pat Nevin, Dimitar Berbatov, Gianfranco Zola, Chris Waddle, (no, not that one, this one), Miroslav Djukic, Ruben Sosa, Francesco Totti, Frank Sinclair, John Aldridge and all of these.
But of course the gold standard, the crap penalty against which all other crap penalties are judged, is Peter Devine. It’s got everything: the stumble before the kick, the doughty refusal to let adversity get in the way of the job, carrying on anyway, of course the central moment of failure which was the kick itself, then the attempt to mask the embarrassment by pretending to be injured. We should probably feel quite sorry for him really: this was the 1991 HFS Northern Premier League Division One Cup final, and he probably didn’t think anyone other than the handful present would witness and laugh at his failure. Shame they didn’t know about YouTube in 1991. Sorry Peter. NM + DH
2) Brian McClair for Manchester United against Arsenal, FA Cup fifth round, 1988
To any playground habitué of the late-80s to mid-90s, the name Brian McClair conjures up a sepia-tinged mist of nostalgia illuminated by sensuous yellows and lush greens, as McClair daintily fondled one nostril and violently snorted down the other, thereby expelling a viscous plume of thick mucus. Most evocatively performed after retrieving the ball from the net, post-goal, it united a generation, until they started practising on each other.
From three yards, no one was deadlier or more creative. Keepers would set themselves for the assured connection of a professional, only to be foxed by a complex and cunning selection of scuffs, scabs, scrapes and bobbles, often all at the same time. There has been no finisher quite like him, either before or since.
United finished the 1987-88 season in second place behind Liverpool and, as the best of the rest, they fancied themselves for a Cup run even when drawn away to Arsenal in the fifth round; they had won there just a month earlier, thanks to a brilliant goal from Gordon Strachan and a typically skanky winner from McClair.
So it was that in front of a poisonous Highbury crowd that included an away following of 8,000, the teams met again. On 21 minutes, Alan Smith nabbed just his second goal in 19 games for the club, before, on 41, the perfect execution of a timeless classic: Kevin Richardson drilled a corner flat to the near post, McClair flicked on, and there was Mick Duxbury to head home from close range.
In the second half United improved, and quickly pulled one back through McClair. But they could not find an equaliser, coming closer to conceding than to scoring when Thomas went through one-on-one, only to collapse for no apparent reason. But then, with three minutes remaining and whistles echoing around the ground, Whiteside turned in the box, wrapped his legs around Thomas’s as he unwisely extended them, fell over, and David Hutchinson pointed to the spot.
Responsibility fell to McClair, who raced in dead straight to leather a slash so high over the bar as to defeat metaphor, cliché, analogy and the time-space continuum. North Bank arms were aloft even as the ball was still rising, a roar of open-mouthed, ecstatic shock quickly segueing into one of uncontrollable, eternal mirth. The Arsenal players immediately surrounded the referee to challenge the original award – all apart from Nigel Winterburn who accompanied McClair back to halfway with a stream of palliative invective.
United were made so irate by this that months later, when Bryan Robson dictated his Christmas Soccer Annual, he recounted the yarn, only now it had postscript: his delight at Winterburn’s Littlewoods Cup final miss. But otherwise, enmity merely festered – until a league match at Old Trafford in October 1990, when Winterburn went in late on Denis Irwin who, along with the conveniently proximate McClair, danced the Hopak with his torso to trigger a more communal coming-together. “Coarser aspects of the competitive spirit,” reckoned Arsenal’s season review; “a glorious exhibition of the glory of football”, reckoned everyone else.
Chalk that up as another to McClair. DH
3) Franco Baresi and Roberto Baggio for Italy against Brazil (World Cup final, 1994)
The footballing authorities have long been a source of altruistic wisdom, so their decision to stage a World Cup final in the middle of the day in the middle of the summer in the middle of Los Angeles was no great surprise. What could possibly go wrong?
Still, it wasn’t Fifa’s fault that contesting the match were the most unBrazilian Brazil and most Italian Italy of all-time. And even then, the competition’s two best players were both involved: Romário, a geometric genius who was football’s finest finisher since Gerd Müller, and Roberto Baggio, whose unsettling calmness dragged Italy through the knockouts more or less singlehandedly. Each had scored five times.
But neither could salvage an absolutely rancid final, both teams frightened to commit players forward and creating more or less nothing. A goalless draw did thus ensue, though this was also due to the presence of the 34-year-old Franco Baresi. Returning 25 days after injuring his meniscus, he produced a faultless display of vision, tenacity and enterprise, reading men like he created them. This would have been staggering in any context, let alone in a World Cup final, against those strikers, in those conditions, after that injury, at that age. Except for the fact that it was Baresi, so.
Chauffeured off the pitch in extra-time after collapsing in agony and exhaustion, he returned for the first penalty of the shootout only to scythe his shot over the bar. Again, he collapsed, this time with anguish; such was his status, so much had he suffered to reach this profound suffering, that Cláudio Taffarel came off his line to console him.
The miss, though, was immediately cancelled out when Gianluca Pagliuca saved from Márcio Santos, before Demetrio Albertini, Romário, Alberigo Evani and Branco scored. But then Daniele Massaro missed and Dunga scored, which meant that if Baggio missed, it was over.
He fired his shot over the bar, then stood in quiet reflection. And then Baresi cried the tears of man whose chance had gone, the tears of a hero whose chance had gone. DH
4) Nigel Clough for Nottingham Forest v Arsenal (First Division, 1990)
“To miss one penalty is unfortunate,” once wrote Oscar Wilde, or at least would have done if he was a football hack on a deadline, “but to miss two, looks like incompetence.” Nigel Clough was in no way an incompetent footballer, an underrated forward with a wonderful touch and a Bergkampian eye for a short pass, but who nevertheless would not have survived in football had he been born ten, maybe even five years later. His was a style of slow appreciation, one of the last footballers who could get by without being an athlete, often playing with his sleeves pulled over his hands to keep out the cold, like an unwilling boy pressed into duty on a cold, windy Sunday park. Nothing was done with power, everything with subtlety and precision: a fine brush rather than a paint roller.
Which made what happened in 1990 all the more odd and amusing. Nottingham Forest were going through one of those seasons where they largely disappointed in the league, but did better in knockout competitions: they finished ninth in the First Division but won the Littlewoods Cup, also conceding that Mark Robins goal in the FA Cup, the fabled saviour of Fergie’s skin.
Still, at the start of March they were third in the league, ten points off the leaders Liverpool but with a game in hand, that game being a trip to Highbury. Arsenal had failed to score in the previous five games, so a chance for Forest to haul in those ahead of them looked ripe: as it turned out, not so much. Arsenal sashayed into a 3-0 lead, goals from Perry Groves, Tony Adams and Kevin Campbell sealing the win, so when in the last minute Adams was alleged by the referee to have brought down Clough (though it looked a perfectly fair tackle), there was probably only a mild clacking of tongues in annoyance at the prospect of their clean sheet disappearing. They need not have worried.
Clough stepped up, shot low to John Lukic’s right but the Arsenal keeper just got down in time to smother the effort and then, in that way goalkeepers do in order to suggest modesty at their achievements, he made to throw the ball out. But wait! For referee Bob Nixon (Wirral), had detected the slightest hint of movement from the goalie, and solemnly decreed that the kick should be taken again. Clough then decided that, as placement hadn’t worked the first time he’d go for power instead, which was a little like a ballerina reasoning that a plié wasn’t doing the trick, so instead diving into the mosh pit of an Anthrax gig. Clough gathered himself, ran up at top pace and leathered the thing ... high, high over the bar. It was the sort of game in which a traveling fan might look to their friend, raise an eyebrow and reason that it was just one of them days, Saint. NM
5) Jaap Stam, for Holland v Italy (European Championships semi-final, 2000)
Euro 2000 was the last great international tournament; that may seem tautological, but it’s not. Yes, every international tournament is great by definition, but not since Euro 2000 have both winners and final stages been great.
Before things got going, France were overwhelming favourites. Though nostalgia records otherwise, they had barely played well in winning the 1998 World Cup, but had since matured into a team both formidable and formidable, fortified with fortitude and forwards.
After winning their first two games, they were then beaten 3-2 by Netherlands, who moved on to a home quarter-final with Yugoslavia, rousting them to the tune of 6-1. This earned them a semi-final against Italy.
And they were looking good just past the half-hour when Gianluca Zambrotta was sent off for a second bookable offence, but this served only to facilitate a defensive masterclass from Fabio Cannavaro and Alessandro Nesta. Even so, they still needed Frank de Boer and Patrick Kluivert to miss penalties in order to preserve their 0-0, before, after 120 minutes, it was time for the test of skill under pressure that is the lottery of penalties.
Up first was Luigi Di Biagio, who scored, before De Boer returned. Whether cocky wink or haunted squint, he made eye contact with Francesco Toldo, who’d saved his earlier effort, then ran up and to see the same thing happen again. Gianluca Pessotto then scored, so when Jaap Stam took his turn, Netherlands were in serious trouble.
Luckily, he was Jaap Stam, a moai on roller skates who always knew exactly what to do. At PSV Eindhoven, he would frequently perform violence upon free-kicks close to goal, and attacked his penalty in similar vein, like it was a free-kick … on his own goalline.
Before you could say so much as GBH, his laces were into the ball which zoomed over the bar and into another dimension; rarely have two objects collided with such force. Toldo could barely suppress his laughter, Stam his stoicism, and to rub it in, Francesco Totti promptly Panenka’d Edwin van der Sar. Kluivert then scored for Holland, Van der Sar saved from Paolo Maldini, and the karma police finally caught up with Paul Bosvelt; Toldo saved again and Italy were set to be well and truly Italied by France in the final. DH
6) Yann Kermorgant, for Leicester v Cardiff (Championship play-off semi-final, 2010)
Not that they will especially care these days, but Leicester don’t have a particularly healthy relationship with penalties and the play-offs. In the 1992 final, it was a Mike Newell penalty that consigned them to a 1-0 defeat to Blackburn. In the 2013 semi-final, Anthony Knockaert missed from 12 yards against Watford, leading to Troy Deeney’s absurd last-minute winner. And then there’s 2010, when their semi-final against Cardiff would be decided by a shootout.
The Panenka shouldn’t necessarily be a flourish, the act of a fancypants too concerned with looking clever rather than actually sticking the thing in the net: Mr Panenka himself has stated on numerous occasions that, back in 1976 when he pioneered the ol’ chip down the centre of the goal, his intention was not to humiliate the goalkeeper Sepp Maier, more that it was simply another way of scoring. It makes sense, too: in most cases, even these days, the goalkeeper will dive left or right, so floating the ball down the middle of the goal often seems entirely sensible.
Still, if you try it, you’d better get it right. If it’s any consolation, it happens to the best of us, as this effort from a young Neymar, or this one from a not quite so young Cristiano Ronaldo will confirm. Perhaps that won’t be a consolation, mind. The semi-final in question had ended all level – Cardiff won the first leg 1-0, Leicester the second 3-2 and with away goals not considered in these encounters, penalties it was.
The first six were all converted, so with Leicester taking their kicks first, a successful effort from Kermorgant would have put plenty of pressure on the next Cardiff taker. Alas, it was not to be, as Kermorgant swaggered up for his kick, eschewed the safer, more emphatic option and opted for the Panenka approach. Of course the only slight problem was that it was terrible, gently floating to the extent that the Cardiff keeper David Marshall had time to abort his initial attempt at a save, fall on his bottom, throw up a hand and keep the ball from net. There was the problem: it wasn’t so much that he chose a slightly cocky penalty, more that he executed it terribly. If you try it, you’d better get it right.
And that was that: not just for the game (Mark Kennedy scored for Cardiff, then Martyn Waghorn missed, in a more conventional manner, putting City through to the final), but for Kermorgant’s Leicester career. Such was the ill-feeling against him that he was shipped off pretty much straight away, loaned out to Ligue 1 and AC Arles Avignon, but not before an irked Foxes fan wrote a little ditty about the incident (warning: contains potty-mouthed lyrics). “I’m not one to point fingers,” said the Leicester hero Steve Walsh later, “but I think the time has come for him to apologise. The fans are disgruntled and they have every right to be. It has cost the club so much.” Still, they’re probably over it now, right? Right? NM
