While the famous penalty technique is the ultimate act of showmanship, the cost of failure is too high to justify
B
eing too smart for your own good is usually drummed out of children before they leave school but sometimes people cannot help themselves. The Panenka penalty, successfully executed, offers the limited benefit of making a goalkeeper look silly and the taker a genius but Brahim Díaz is the latest to learn the cost of what happens when it goes wrong.
Díaz was given 15 minutes to consider what to do with his spot-kick after the ludicrous levels of drama in the Africa Cup of Nations final. Maybe this was his undoing: being able to ponder every option, from the rudimentary to the artistic, until deciding to replicate Antonin Panenka’s creation with what could, and should, have been the last kick of the tournament.
It went wrong, terribly so, for the Real Madrid forward, who chipped meekly into the hands of the unmoved Édouard Mendy. Senegal went on to triumph in extra time and Díaz had to sheepishly collect his golden boot award from Gianni Infantino with the look of a child who wants chips for dinner but is getting peas.
