Manchester United’s Bruno Fernandes gave a novel reason for being ‘upset’ before sending his penalty skied over the crossbar against Fulham – but he’s not the only high-profile footballer to have trotted out an excuse after missing from 12 yards.
There can be all kinds of reasons for missing a penalty. From nerves, to making a poor connection, to the goalkeeper reading your intentions.
But this is one area in football you just have to own and hold your hands up if you fluff your lines. At least you’d think…
Bruno Fernandes
Fernandes was at pains to stress that his awkward coming together with referee Chris Kavanagh was not the reason for blazing his penalty over against Fulham.
But he still mentioned it in his post-match interview, and he was widely pilloried on social media for expecting an apology from Kavanagh and admitting the minor bump ‘triggered’ him.
He’d have been better served by playing it down entirely.
“I was upset. As a penalty-taker, you have your own routines, your own things that you do,” the Manchester United captain told Sky Sports afterwards.
“It upset me because the referee didn’t apologise. That is what triggered me in that moment, but that’s not an excuse for missing the penalty.
“I had a very bad hit on the ball. I put my foot too under the ball and that’s why it ended up going over the bar.”
Morten Wieghorst
In fairness, this one is less an ‘excuse’ but rather a ‘totally legitimate reason’, and a commendable one at that.
It still has to go down as one of the most memorable, notable penalty misses in football history, though – despite having happened in an otherwise totally forgettable Carlsberg Cup friendly between Denmark and Iran back in 2003.
Denmark were awarded a spot kick in absolutely bizarre circumstances.
An Iranian defender mistook a whistle from the stands as the referee blowing for half-time, and picked up the ball with his hands in the penalty area.
The referee had no choice but to award a penalty, but the Danes had reservations. After consulting with his manager, former Celtic midfielder Wieghorst stepped up and intentionally sent it wide.
“It was unfair to capitalise on that,” he explained after the match.
Denmark lost the match 1-0, but the act of sportsmanship earned him an Olympic Committee fair play award.
Gary Lineker
Lineker took one of the most infamous Panenka penalties ever, scuffing it completely in a Wembley friendly against Brazil in 1992.
“What was going through your delusional mind at the time?” teased Micah Richards on Lineker’s The Rest Is Football podcast.
“I was watching him in the stand,” Alan Shearer responded.
“I was thinking the same thing, Micah, what the flip are you playing at?”
“That’s the thing about a Panenka; if you don’t get it quite right, you look like a complete fool,” said Lineker.
“Okay, on a serious note now, I’ll tell you why,” he added.
“A couple of reasons, mainly because I thought it was a guarantee that I’d score doing that. I’d seen this goalkeeper dive out of the way all the time, and I thought to myself, if I just float it down the middle, I’m guaranteed to score. I’ve scored quite a few penalties like that.
“I thought that was the best chance of scoring; I just hit it a little bit flat, like your duffer chip if you’re playing golf. It went so slow that the keeper actually had time to almost dive and then come back and pick it up.”
Lineker did give a reason for why he got it so wrong, but to be fair his tongue was firmly in his cheek.
“I knew before the game,” he responded, when Shearer asked if it was a pre-planned decision to try the Panenka.
“I practised for the previous two games, just on my own in a net for a while. There was a lot of grass at Wembley, so there’s my excuse.”
Bukayo Saka and Zinedine Zidane
READ: 18 of the best & worst Panenkas ever: Lineker, Saka, Zidane, Pirlo…
Antoine Griezmann
Back in 2019, Les Bleus cruised to a 4-1 victory over Albania in a Euro 2020 qualifier, but it wasn’t a flawless evening’s work – with Griezmann crashing his penalty against the crossbar.
Speaking after the match, he wondered whether the absence of his partner Erika Choperena might’ve been to blame. Superstitious much?
“I don’t know [what happened]. I don’t know,” he told reporters.
“As I said earlier, maybe it’s because my wife didn’t watch the game!”
Robert Pires
We’re giving top billing to Pires here, because it goes down as his, but Thierry Henry shares just as much culpability for the shambles of a penalty attempt against Manchester City in 2005.
The pair attempted to recreate Johan Cruyff and Jesper Olsen’s deviously inspired 1982 penalty for Ajax and had practised it in training.
But when it came to pulling it off for real, they switched roles – to a hilariously disastrous effect.
“The story of our missed penalty is actually a funny one,” Pires reminisced in an interview with The Times.
“The day before the City game, Thierry and I practised it at training. There was one difference though: he was passing and I was scoring. We never said we would do it against City if we had a penalty.
”It turned out that we got one. I took the ball to take it, Thierry didn’t say anything and I scored it, putting the ball on the right of the goalkeeper.
“Then when we were awarded a second one, Thierry approached me and said: ‘Let’s do it but we change the roles, you pass and I score!’
“It was not a joke, because you can do this penalty; I can pass the ball for someone and he can score, I said, ‘No, we cannot do this, it’s impossible.’
“It was a very strange moment, especially for me, not for Thierry Henry, but for me it was very embarrassing.”
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