Not you. Not the kid. Let someone else take it.It was impossible to think anything else when the camera homed in on the fourth Australia penalty taker and showed Lucas Herrington, aged 18, making that dreaded walk from the centre circle – a teenager alone in a stadium full of 70,000 people.Four years ago, Herrington was in the Brisbane fan zone during the 2022 World Cup in Qatar watching Australia with his mates. Now, they were watching him, in a World Cup last 16 shootout against Egypt, together with millions of others back home in Australia, and praying.It felt like the weight of the world, or at least a nation, was on those young shoulders as he accepted the ball from Mat Ryan, the Australia goalkeeper, placed it on the spot and took two deep breaths.The previous 120 minutes couldn’t have gone much better for him. Playing with a maturity beyond his years, Herrington was outstanding up against two of the top strikers in the world: Mohamed Salah and Omar Marmoush. It was only his sixth cap for Australia and his second appearance at the World Cup, following his debut against Paraguay a week earlier.A tall, composed centre-back, Herrington is a star in the making. Barcelona have already had a bid rejected for him and other top clubs are circling. “He is an exceptionally talented young man with the world at his feet,” the Colorado Rapids president Padraig Smith told Yahoo! Sports. “When our scouts identified him, and we began the recruitment process, we knew he had a high ceiling.”“You can see the guy’s like a Rolls-Royce,” Harry Souttar, the Australia captain, purred after the Paraguay game.Lucas Herrington impressed against Egypt (Thomas Coex/AFP via Getty Images)Herrington smiled when asked about those remarks a few days later. “I’ll take that,” he said.If only he hadn’t said the same thing about that fourth penalty.The shootout had already taken a strange twist by the time that Herrington stepped up. With 119 minutes on the clock, Australia made a substitution – but not a conventional one. Tony Popovic, the Australia coach, withdrew his goalkeeper Pat Beach, who had made an outstanding save in the dying seconds of normal time and played superbly throughout the World Cup. Ryan, the second-choice goalkeeper, was brought on in Beach’s place. Beach, in other words, was benched.