The Worst Penalty In The World…

‘WHAT are the worst penalties of all time? Most people’s answers to that question will be dependent not upon the penalty kick itself, but rather its significance. The more important the result of the kick, the more it is remembered, and the more its quality is questioned.

NASA was pleased with the result of installing a camera on Waddle’s penalty ball

This is clearly unscientific, not to mention unfair. Penalties cover a broad spectrum. At one extreme there are powerful shots accurately placed in the very corners of the goal, where it is effectively impossible for the keeper to reach them.

These are very difficult to execute even on an empty training ground with no goalkeeper, let alone in a high-pressure game with millions watching. Alan Shearer was a master of this art, and Gary Lineker was another you would be happy to bet your life on.

Then comes a huge band of penalties which are good, pretty good, or poor, but which manage to beat the keeper. All of these are treated as good penalties because they went in, yet even the best of them will be regarded as poor if it is saved – even if the save was a one-in-a-hundred combination of guessing the right way, diving early, and the ball happening to strike a leg and stay out of the goal.

So when Stuart Pearce hit his 1990 World Cup semi-final straight down the middle, he was a villain because the German keeper blocked it. But when David Beckham did the same against Argentina in the summer, the keeper dived away from the ball and Golden Balls was a hero.

Other important misses are a combination of so-so kicks and lucky guessing, or – cruellest of all – good kicks and great saves. But the most entertaining variety are the absolute stinkers – the kind of high, wide and handsome effort that Chris Waddle produced in 1990, when he put the first ever football into orbit and left a nation heartbroken.

Until this week, Chris Waddle’s penalty would have been the third-worst I have ever seen. Number two would have been that amateur video clip that is trotted out from time to time on sports comedy shows, in which the penalty taker stubs his toe into the ground, falls over, and the ball trickles along for a couple of seconds before coming to rest about a yard from the spot.

And number one would of course have been Diana Ross missing the open goal from about two yards during the opening ceremony of the 1994 World Cup, whereupon the goal mechanically split in two as though blasted apart by the shot which Ms Ross was supposed to have smashed into it.

But now a new candidate has come straight in at number one, and candidate is the operative word.

Edmund Stoiber, the Conservative candidate for the German Chancellorship, decided to play the football card by taking a penalty in a football ground.

His kick not only missed the goal altogether, but smashed into the face of a woman standing some way behind the goal, knocking her glasses aside and cutting her face so badly that blood poured from the wound.

For poor technique and high drama, we defy anyone to beat that. ‘

Posted: 30th, July 2002 | In: Back pages Comment | TrackBack | Permalink