4 days ago
England's rotten penalties against Sweden stink of poor planning, writes IAN HERBERT
Anyone can miss a penalty in the heat of the big occasion. Stuart Pearce and Gareth Southgate are testament to how it can feel. But nine misses out of 14 in one shootout?
The sight of Grace Clinton's terribly weak connection after Sweden goalkeeper Jennifer Falk had ballooned a kick over the bar turned England 's shootout against Sweden into one of the worst ever at an international tournament. It was not a glorious advert for the women's game.
In the aftermath, there were no material explanations from England's players as to why four of their players managed to miss and Beth Mead offered the flat observation that the team had practised every day and 'sometimes it doesn't go to plan'.
But this reasoning did not account for what appeared to be a scandalous lack of preparation.
We are told everything is joined up when it comes to England's teams — men and women — with marginal gains disseminating out from one cognitive core at St George's Park. But when it came to the most critical moment for the national women's team since their World Cup final in Sydney two years ago, the learning was sorely lacking.
There has always been a little resistance to the men's game being brought into an assessment of the women's. As Lionesses manager at the 2019 World Cup, Phil Neville would bring his Manchester United hinterland into the conversation and cite Sir Alex Ferguson. Some frowned on this and on him.
But now is the moment to point out how England's men have set an example for shootouts which Sarina Wiegman should have borrowed from. When penalties became a source of fear for the men, Southgate applied his mind to taking out the fear. He set up an 18-month taskforce to tackle the reasons for a hoodoo which brought six defeats out of seven.
It was about 'controlling the controllables', with a huddle before the shootout limited to the takers, each player assigned a 'buddy' to welcome them back into the pack post-kick and — critically — players being drilled in not rushing. In the shootout against the Swiss at last year's Euros, when England scored all five of their kicks, the average wait time for each penalty was 5.2 seconds, compared with Switzerland's 1.3.
The evidence of Thursday's England kicks in Zurich was that the work Southgate undertook for the men had gone to waste. Wiegman's penalty takers' average wait time — the gap from the whistle to the start of the run-up — was 3.6 seconds, with scorers Alessia Russo (5sec), Chloe Kelly (7.6) and Lucy Bronze (4.1) showing it pays to take your time.
Lauren James allowed herself just one second. Mead took 1.5sec before missing, Alex Greenwood an extraordinary 0.8sec before fluffing her kick and Clinton 5sec.
The choice and order of kickers leaves Wiegman with more questions to answer. Two of the experienced takers, Georgia Stanway and Ella Toone, had been substituted on 70 minutes, with England still trailing 2-0.
So in sixth was Clinton, who had never taken a penalty before for England. Kelly, England's best player from the spot, was curiously only fifth, scoring England's best effort.
The typically insouciant Wiegman provided no sense that England's problems would be a focus before Tuesday's semi-final against Italy in Geneva. She actually seemed to imply the ball had been a problem.
'Of course I was concerned,' she said. 'I know the players are capable of taking a penalty because they're really good. You can talk about the reasons — the fatigue, the ball, the whole picture of it, which is really hard.'
But 'no', she replied to the question of whether extra work and thought were now needed.
'We have trained this. We know what players are capable of and we move on. Of course we prepare for a penalty shootout, because that's always a scenario, but I will not make it a big point.'
The power of Bronze's decisive kick raised the question of why she, such an experienced player, had not been among the first five and was behind young Clinton.
She stripped away strapping on her left leg and smashed her kick down the middle, later revealing she had been watching the Sweden keeper and seen her diving early each time.
'Statistically in shootouts it's risky for goalkeepers to stand still, so I thought, 'Go down the middle'.'
Like most aspects of England's shootout, Bronze's logic seemed to have been thought out on the hoof. If the Swedes had not been even worse than England, the inquisition would have been far more severe.
