“You had one job!” is the punch line to many a meme.For spot-kick specialists brought onto the pitch with the specific task of taking a penalty, few punch lines are more painful.On Monday night, Germany and the Netherlands exited the World Cup in one of the most brutal ways, with penalty shootout defeats against Paraguay and Morocco. In those games, substitutes Nadiem Amiri (for Germany), Fabian Balbuena (for Paraguay) and Justin Kluivert (for the Netherlands) were brought on in the second half of extra time, in all likelihood, with the job of taking a penalty if the game ended in a shootout.Of those three, only Amiri was successful in scoring his penalty.Since Euro 1996, Opta’s statistics show that across European Championships and World Cups, 32 penalties have been taken by substitutes brought on in the second half of extra time. Of those, 18 have been scored — a rate of 56 per cent.When looking at all substitutes, the chance of a converted penalty increases to 66 per cent (111 scored out of 168 taken), and higher still at 73 per cent for players who started the match (201 scored out of 277 taken).
Euros/WC shootouts since 1996 Shootout pens since 1996TakenScored% scoredSubbed on in 2nd half extra-time321856 per centSubbed on in total16811166 per centStarted the match27720173 per cent
