Football is an injustice without remedy. There is a lot of talk about meritocracy, about putting pressure, about always running a little faster than your rival to get closer to victory. And none of that can help. Not even talent is an absolute truth. From the penalty spot the lights go out even for the brightest stars in the football firmament, and one of those stars who is worth millions and millions of euros, and who enjoys the most coveted left foot on the market ends up being a poor clumsy who It seems he never kicked a boat. From eleven meters you have to play to the right or left, up or down. The most creative ones like Panenka, Loco Abreu, Sergio Ramos or Hakimi opt for the center of the target, although those would be a separate chapter. The vast majority opts for one side, and whatever has to happen happens. I am surprised by how “well” the penalties are taken when they are scored and how “badly” taken they are when they are missed. The same shot, with the same effect, at the same speed, at the same height and from the same side, can go, for the public and the press, from true genius to calamity depending on where the goalkeeper lands.
The maximum penalty is played at an almost childish distance, which makes this chapter of soccer more advisable for optimistic soccer players than for great ballplayers. What happens is that geniuses always have to go through there because they are assumed to have an almost certain value due to their condition, precisely, as geniuses. On the other hand, football insists on remembering that this is an absurd assumption. The examples are countless. It is curious to see how Salah this season seems almost like a pharaoh who turns everything he touches into gold, while Mbappé is in the middle of a journey through the desert. Both missed a penalty in the same match, although no one has remembered the one the Egyptian took – much worse executed than the Frenchman’s. It is also fun to see how the group of sports analysts who populate the gatherings pointed out Kylian’s cowardice for not wanting to take the penalty against Getafe and, instead, criticizing his audacity for doing so three days later against Bilbao. Football, within its hopeless injustice, is a sport full of certainties post-matchwhich is when you never fail.
The penalty, meanwhile, is like one of those days when it might rain or it might not. You might put it in or you might not. So much so, that if one starts to imagine a possible crossover in the next round of the Copa del Rey between Logroñés and Real Madrid, if suddenly there was a penalty in favor of Real and Mbappé took courage, the right back of the Rioja team —Pol Arnau—he would only have to go back to his good side—for which Mbappé has missed his two penalties—and who knows, he might stop it or he might not. Pol, the son of former Barcelona goalkeeper Francesc Arnau, managed to save a penalty this week against Girona striker Abel Ruiz and gave his team qualification. “I looked at the sky and my father gave me energy,” he summarized in The Vanguard.
Indeed, a penalty is more a matter of energy than anything else. There are few unstoppable maximum penalties or stoppages. Those who insist on making a penalty a great goal often end up leaving through the back door of the stadium. There is an image from behind the goal of Roberto Baggio’s penalty against Brazil in the 1994 World Cup final that helps to understand the dimension of things. The footballers look like aliens from television, although if you get closer they have a human shape. Between the arch and the Italian there were barely eleven steps. Even a youngster or an old man can shoot with enough power to make that pass to the net and end in a goal. Looking at the stopped photograph, the ball in the clouds, it was very clear where to shoot. But you know, there are days when it may or may not rain.
