Review
Culture
Football
Sport
5 min read

Shootout: what penalties say about life

Football is a global language and the shootout is the end to Shakespearian tragedy.

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A footballer takes a penalty kick.
England v Columbia: 2018 World Cup shootout.

It is hard to pity entitled, overpaid footballers.  Until, that is, it comes down to penalties after extra time.  Even when you do not care who wins, the drama of the penalty shootout is so intense and all-consuming that every heart rate quickens. 

Is there a more exquisite form of sporting torture? 

Sport is laden with cliché, and the refrain, ‘it’s come down to the lottery of penalties’ is an established part of the lexicon.  But is it just the spin of the roulette?  That you can’t prepare effectively for the cauldron of the stadium?  

Not according to Geir Jordet, it isn’t.  The Norwegian Professor of Psychology and Football is on a mission to convince the world there is lots you can do to get ready and those that don’t are more likely to fail. 

There is skill involved in taking a penalty, an ability that can be honed with practice.  Individual players can be trained to take their time (but not too long), to establish a routine that helps them take control of the situation, to take careful breaths, and to focus.  They can be helped with blocking out the trash talk of opponents, especially goalkeepers, who subtly try to get under their skin in the seconds leading up to a penalty.  Extensive research can be carried out by data-rich backroom staff to help with preparation.  And behind all this is the recognition that taking a penalty is a team effort, not an individual one.   

This latter observation feels especially counter intuitive.  There is nothing more lonely than the appearance of one man or woman taking the long walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot.  But teams can support one another with words of encouragement and touch.  Not just in the grasping of each other’s shoulders in the centre circle, but in reaching out to those who both score and miss.  One reason Geir Jordet advises that the manager should choose penalty takers rather than look for volunteers is that they then can take full responsibility for the outcome.  It is hard to believe there are still times when a manager looks around at players after extra time, hoping to see in the eyes who is up to the task.  These duties should be sorted out in advance, with back-up plans for when players are injured or substituted.

Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort.

Jordet, in his stimulating book Pressure: Lessons From The Psychology Of The Penalty Shoot Out says that anxiety is normal and should be embraced.  Greater openness round mental wellbeing is allowing the modern professional to admit this.  Erling Haarland, one of the world’s most accomplished goal scorers, has shared the fear he regularly feels round taking a penalty; it is hard to imagine a player from the 1970s saying the same. 

Missing a penalty in the shootout is inevitable; the only way it can conclude.  And statistics show that the world’s greatest players, like Lionel Messi, are not notably better at converting penalties than others.  On average, the best players have around an eighty percent success rate (which, significantly, is one missed penalty out of five in a shootout).  As in other professions, the best results are achieved by creating systems and cultures that can adapt quickly and honestly to errors and learn from them without humiliating those who fail. 

Reading the book cast my mind back to the archetypal shootout between David and Goliath.  Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort.  Perhaps David should have lost it, and not just because of his size.  Beforehand, he had a serious bust up with his side and those who did not see him as a team player.  Then Goliath trash talked him like Emi Martinez is famed for with Aston Villa and Argentina.  And finally, he ran up to take his shot very quickly, without much reflection.  But then again, Geir Jordet would be the first to point out that preparing badly for a contest does not mean you can’t win it – just that you are less likely to. 

Football is a global language and the penalty shootout is like the cataclysmic end to a Shakespearian tragedy.  English fans are long suffering audiences of this trauma – from Italia 90 to Wembley 2021, via the 1996 Euros when football was coming home until a last minute wrong turning.  But many other nations have under-achieved at penalties, like Holland and Spain and, more recently, France.  Roberto Baggio of Italy missed the decisive penalty in the first World Cup Final to go to penalties in 1994.  He says of it:  

‘I failed that time.  Period.  And it affected me for years.  It was the worst moment of my career.  I still dream about it.’.   

The personal stakes are as high, if not higher, than the nation’s.   

We are left with the feeling that hugely divergent outcomes can emerge from the smallest and most random of causes.  The human tendency is then to rationalise the outcome in ways that make it seem inevitable.  Geir Jordet is aware of this in football, but in other walks of life, we continue to build up wobbly cases on shallow evidence as a way of warding off anxiety or the fear that others will think we are clueless if we admit to the existence of chance.  Most people are right less than eighty percent of the time; something we might hold in mind when the next England players make that solitary walk to the penalty spot.  

Review
Art
Culture
Film & TV
War & peace
4 min read

Not for glory or galleries, capturing modern wars through art

Mary Kinmonth documents the battles women artists see.
In a bombed-out tiled room, two art works hang in the shape of a tiled jacket and shape
Second Hand 7, by Zhanna Kadyrova
Foxtrot Films.

 

When it comes to war, what do women see that men don’t? This is the question asked repeatedly throughout British filmmaker Margy Kinmonth’s new documentary War Paint: Women at War. The third part of a trilogy, the film focuses on the stories of female artists who have created art in their experience of war and conflict. From British women during the London Blitz to those responding to contemporary conflicts in Iran, Ukraine and Sudan, the film takes a thoughtful look into how war has been experienced by those who have been previously excluded from the story. 

Zhanna Kadyrova is a Ukranian artist working from a progressing front line. One sequence shows a fight against time as her team attempts to remove one of her public sculptures as the front line draws closer. Kadyrova operates in recent conflict zones– one of her series involves transforming tiled walls in bombed-out rubble into clothes that appear to hang from the remaining walls. In the wake of violent destruction, Kadyrova wants you to remember the lives left behind. 

Shirin Neshat is an Iranian photographer and artist working from New York. Her work brings together the weapon, the human body, the veil, and the text of the Qu’ran to ask questions of the impacts of the Iranian war on women.  Neshat makes you look right into the eyes of these women– she puts weapons of war into their hands and thus gives them agency that the Iranian government has taken away. 

Marcelle Hanselaar’s work shows the unspoken side of war- depicting the aftermath of violence and sexual assault that many women experience when conflict rips through their homes. 

Women at War brings the audience through one female artist after another, depicting a diversity of styles, voices, and perspectives that range from official war commissions to illegal graffiti. The artists shown don’t even all agree with filmmaker Margy Kinmonth’s premise - that women always see things differently from men. But what they bring together is a view of war far removed from ideas of national glory that often line the halls of national galleries. 

The filmmaker’s own art teacher, the painter Maggi Hambling, says this: 

“For men, victory and defeat marks the end of a war. For the woman, the war doesn’t end.” 

Knowing the consequences and aftermath of war– destroyed communities, post traumatic stress disorder, sexual violence, broken families, that war is more than valiance– isn’t a perspective held by women alone. 

According to a recent YouGov poll, “a third of 18-40 year olds would refuse to serve in the event of a world war – even if the UK were under imminent threat of invasion.” Among reasons listed are an unwillingness “to fight for the rich and powerful – who they see as profiteers or otherwise unfairly able to avoid the consequences of conflict themselves.”

As one respondent put it: "My life is more valuable than being wasted in a war caused by rich people’s greed."

Women have been speaking up for the last 50 years, and the young have heard them. War is not glory, but trauma. Young people see this when they look around. They don’t easily buy into nationalist rhetoric and have no pretenses about the glory of war. They know war is not a place to seek accolades upon accolades, but an evil reality that pays an inordinate toll on human society. 

Today, global tensions are high, and war seems more possible a reality for many in England than previously. Keir Starmer has said the government will increase military defence spending to 2.5 per cent of the national budget by 2027. But Brits aren’t lining up to buy their uniforms. 

If the UK government expects its young citizens to prepare for conflict, they need to be honest about what that involves. They need to be prepared to face a knowing crowd about the realities of war and show a willingness to fight for their lives during peacetime. It’s not that young people are politically disinterested or unwilling to take a stand when it matters. Students at universities rising up in pro-Palestine protests or climate activism reveal that they care greatly about the world they are living in. They want to take an active role in shaping it, and aren’t afraid to face consequences if they find a worthy fight. 

Political commentators used to think we have reached “the end of history” with liberal democracy the last man standing. But War Paint: Women at War shows us that even an end to war doesn’t bring the end of suffering. It complicates the narrative that war is a path to victory. Everyone pays the price of war, yet those in power rarely bear the burden. If leaders want young people to fight for their country, they must first prove they are fighting for them. Otherwise, no one will answer the call.

 

View stills from the film and find screening times.

Watch the trailer

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