‘We believed we could do something special’: How meticulous England ended their penalty shootout pain

The England men’s football team and penalty shoot-outs: they go together like teenagers and acne.

From 1990 to 2012, England were eliminated from the World Cup or European Championship on penalties six times out of ten. They lost six of their first seven shoot-outs in major tournaments – the worst record of any men’s national team in the world. With each failure, the dread of shoot-outs increased and, it seemed, the certainty that England would flounder next time a game was decided by whether players could beat a goalkeeper from 12 yards.

And so before the 2018 World Cup, there was an unspoken fear among England fans: the spectre of penalties. Gareth Southgate, England’s manager, had missed perhaps the country’s most famous penalty of the lot, against Germany at Wembley in the semi-finals of the European Championship in 1996. England’s fear of penalties had only intensified since.

“Practising didn’t help us too much on this occasion,” England manager Roy Hodgson said after England lost their sixth penalty shoot-out, in 2012. “You can’t reproduce the tired legs. You can’t reproduce the pressure. You can’t reproduce the nervous tension.”

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Before the 2018 World Cup, Southgate and his backroom team took a very different view. Rather than cling to the comfort blanket of penalties being a ‘lottery’, a familiar refrain of previous England managers, Southgate and his team researched penalties extensively. They scoured football, other sports and science for any clues about how to improve.

England analysed all the research on penalties, interviewing academics about their findings and how they could be used to gain an advantage; they also commissioned their own research. Every member of the squad did psychometric tests to help Southgate compile his list of penalty takers. From March – three months before the World Cup began – players practised taking penalties when they were tired, just as they would after playing extra time. To put extra pressure on themselves, players often told the goalkeeper where they were aiming before shooting, effectively reducing the margin for error. And they practised the walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot, so this would not be a novel feeling during a shoot-out. Everything was done to prepare players for the cauldron of a shoot-out.

Rather than tiptoe around the topic, players were encouraged to discuss penalties, and how they would approach their shots from 12 yards in front of the nation’s gaze. “We speak about pressure, pressure moments, key moments in the game,” said Marcus Rashford, a crucial player for England in the World Cup and since. The team did not try to deny England’s traumatic history in penalty shoot-outs, but instead tried to channel it to their advantage.

“For us it was to get rid of people thinking – it’s England in a penalty shoot-out, and we’re probably not the most confident. So I think as a team we were just determined to put whatever England had done in the past behind us. We believed that we could do something special with that England squad, so we were just focused.”

England’s preparations created a novel feeling for the players involved. Before the shoot-out with Colombia in the second round of the World Cup, “it felt like we were going to win a penalty shoot-out, which probably England teams haven’t had for a while”, Rashford recalled.

Over the preceding months, England had developed a routine that players could stick to in shoot-outs, to keep the focus on the task at hand, not the consequences if they missed. Before each penalty, Jordan Pickford, England’s goalkeeper, handed players the ball. This method aimed to give players as much control as possible over what happened in the seconds before they took their kick.

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When Rashford stepped up to take England’s second penalty, with England 2–1 down in the shoot-out, “Picks just gave me the ball – we used that little routine as something to settle us down, so it felt just like how it was when we practised”. Although more than 20 million in the UK and millions more throughout the world were watching, for Rashford “it was a normal situation”. The routine with Pickford helped normalise a moment that legions of former England players found an ordeal.

And so as Rashford embarked upon his penalty, he was not consumed by fear of failure, just by the task – ordinarily simple enough for such a skilful player – of beating a goalkeeper from 12 yards. He managed to "just put everything to one side. And at the end of the day it was just a penalty, and if you do what you’ve been practising then nine times out of 10 you’ll score. You just want to be clear on what you’re doing.

"Mentally, you need to relax and think about how many times you’ve scored penalties, and just getting that confident feeling when you’re stepping up. So I just try and concentrate on that.

"Doing the actual penalty wasn’t as bad as people think – when you’re as focused as we were at the time it was almost normal."

Rashford did his trademark shuffle run-up, and then dispatched the ball emphatically to the bottom right-hand corner. David Ospina, Colombia’s goalkeeper, never had a chance. After celebrating, Rashford completed the last bit of his routine – going up to Pickford, wishing him good luck for the next penalty he would face.

A few minutes later, England won their first ever World Cup penalty shoot-out. Pickford – following advice given by England’s backroom staff about which way to dive – parried a penalty from Colombia’s Carlos Bacca with his left hand after diving to his right. Eric Dier calmly scored the decisive penalty, triggering pandemonium and, for England fans reared on penalty failure, disbelief.

“We did our research, with [Martyn] Margetson [the goalkeeping coach] and the analysis staff,” Pickford explained after the game. "I had a fair feeling. Falcao was really the only one who didn’t go ‘his’ way. But it’s about: set; react; and go with power."

No longer is an agonising penalty shoot-out defeat the first image that people have when England are mentioned. "I think right now everyone has a different picture, a different painting in their heads of the England national team," Rashford said.

For now, at least, the curse had been lifted.

This is an extract from The Best: How Elite Athletes are Made which is out now featuring interviews with Marcus Rashford, Siya Kolisi, Steph Curry, Ada Hegerberg, Jamie Carragher, Pete Sampras and Elena Delle Donne.  

The Best: How Elite Athletes Are Made is available to buy now