“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
“Oh Christ, here we go again.” The whistle blows for the end of extra time in Budapest and instantly I am greeted by a familiar sinking feeling. Penalties. For as long as I can remember, I have always harboured an intense dislike of penalty shoot-outs. Yet as a lifelong football fan they are, obviously, an inescapable part of the sport I love. Dread it, run from it, support a mediocre Championship side who rarely see knockout football, spot kicks arrive all the same.
Penalties, in all their tortuous simplicity, feel to me like a blunt instrument in a sport full of nuance and shifting sands. Football isn’t a binary game; at any given moment in a match, there are an enormous range of possibilities of what might happen. Penalties, by their very nature, take this fluid game of uncertainties and unexpected moments, and narrow it down to a sharp point of only two possible outcomes. The ball goes in the net or it doesn’t. You win or you lose. That’s it.
I have watched penalty shoot-outs in stadiums, I have watched them on TV, I have listened to them on the radio. I have watched them for my club and I have watched them for my national side. And I have never, ever enjoyed a single second of one. ‘Just ten minutes,’ you think. ‘Ten minutes into the future, I’ll know what has happened, and I’ll either be incredibly sad or incredibly happy, but at least I’ll know.’ Yet before you get to that peaceful future state and its comforting clarity, you have to endure the penalty shoot-out. There is no other way. You simply must go through it. That player down there, walking up to the spot, doesn’t know me, doesn’t know that I exist; but holds my entire future in their hands.
You might be assuming that given this year’s Champions League final went to penalties, and the way I am talking about them, that I am a fan of Paris or Arsenal, or at least wanted one side to win over the other. I categorically am not and did not. I watched the game not particularly caring who triumphed, although I will admit I gently hoped it would be Paris because the smugness of all my Arsenal fan colleagues would have been utterly intolerable. Apart from that – and can you begrudge me? – I was as neutral as they come. And yet this final’s penalty shoot-out still, as they all do, inspired heart-thumping, ‘Oh my God, I can’t watch’ terror inside me.
When a game goes to penalties, I often become the subject of derision from friends and family – “Look at Lizzie!” is a common refrain when I’m biting my fingernails or can only hover in the doorway to watch. Once, watching spot kicks between Millwall and Brighton – a game where I was again a neutral – the man in the seat next to me at the Den was openly laughing at my total inability to look directly at the action. It turns out my excruciating aversion to a shoot-out is uncommon, certainly for impartial observers. I canvassed friends, family and colleagues, and every single one said something along the lines of, ‘Ooh no, I love them; they’re thrilling.’ Well, almost everyone.
The only person I found who feels the way I do was my mum, and she doesn’t even like or watch football. I asked her why. “I just see the scared little boy inside the man,” she said. OK, that phrasing might be her years as a therapist talking, but that empathy for the players is at least partially why I find them so difficult to endure, even as a neutral – you imagine you are in some measure feeling what they feel, the unthinkable pressure, the sweet relief or the stomach drop of dejection. I have zero connection at all with Gabriel as a player and yet I still felt so sorry for him after his miss. Why can’t they all just end up happy, you think wistfully.
Well, they can’t. That’s the entire point, Lizzie, you idiot. At the end there will always be one team sprinting towards the goal with arms open wide and there will always be another dropping to their knees with hearts broken. And if there was another way, would we even want it? During one World Cup I spent an entire cab journey being lectured to by the driver about a complicated system he had invented to eradicate penalties from the professional game, based on awarding points every time a player committed a foul. At the end of the game, you tally up the points, and the team with the fewest wins. Et voilà, no penalties! I mean, I get the sentiment, but honestly – even though I’ve spent this entire column telling you how much I hate them – in all their heart-thumping, almost-unbearable torment, I’d miss them if they were gone.
