Just remember the words of Saint Matty...penalty taking is easy...put the ball between the posts...they don't move.
Without looking, the thing that makes penalty taking difficult is the intensity of the situation. The crowd baying for either a goal or a save. The pressure is on the penalty taker because he really ought to score. Matty used to thoroughly enjoy those moments. That's probably the football epitome of cool.
To be yet another person who is posting without looking at the article (can't access at work) I've always found it hard to understand why a professional footballer can't strike the ball hard at a point 3-4 inches from one of the four corners. In comparison with the precision required other sports such as golf or snooker for instance is really doesn't seem that difficult. I guess it must be the pressure thing, but you wonder why more psychologists don't get involved with football like that guy who has helped out Ronnie O'Sullivan and the Olympic cyclists, particularly for a big tournament like the world cup.
maybe .. this is though: [video=youtube;Tp2HZNheCZ8]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Tp2HZNheCZ8[/video]
Remember when Clive Woodward was here and he set up all the cameras and told the players just to kick the ball into the net and repeat it a few times. They couldn't. Every time was different. Now, of course you don't necessarily want to do it the same each time but the fact that they couldn't speaks volumes. Someone like Johnny Wilkinson practiced until he could repeat the same movement over and over such that it held up under pressure. And its not that his kicks were identical either. But once you know how to kick it, he could do so under any variety of circumstances. I've mentioned this before, but when JW's kicking coach came and worked with our youngsters he was able to get them kicking more accurately and with more power after just one session.
Always think the keeper should stay still, at least that way he can cover around 30% of the goal and will make the penalty taker look stupid if he tries a little dink shot
That's OK as a one off. Matty's was an attitude. You can convince people for one penalty, but you have to repeat it. Matty remained cool 47 times.
It's strange how much more Rugby coaching focuses on drills compared to football. When I was quite young I was a pretty handy fly-half and went to Bath for trials and coaching, they always told us you had to do something 1500 times before it would be ingrained in your muscle memory, and believe me, they'd make you do it 3000 times just to be safe. Unfortunately for me this sort of training bores the absolute **** out of me. You have to be a special kind of idiot to enjoy rugby training, it's more like being beasted in the army. I really enjoyed football training which was far more about being expressive, it just happens that I'm not very good at football, apart from kicking it really hard!
I heard once that Wenger makes (or used to) the Arsenal squad to keepy uppies every day for 10-15 minutes.
I've read that staying in the middle is a good strategy and is more likely to succeed than diving one way or the other, however, if you do it every time you're going to get worked out pretty quickly, and it wouldn't look too clever if you never appear to make the effort while the opposition are effortlessly stroking them into the corners.
Not actually about taking penalties, although Jimmy Buzzard probably approached that job with the same single-mindedness: [video=youtube;sw8ZL_gcTSM]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sw8ZL_gcTSM[/video]
Not sure why the England team needs anyone else how to teach them to take penalties when Rickie's there? I wonder if there are any stats which show where Rickie hits them?
