Soccer Penalty Quotes

A penalty is a cowardly way to score.

The idea of adultery is like a soccer ball. Yeah, you might kick it around for a while, but if you actually wind up scoring, you get slapped with a huge penalty.

I watched my first penalty shoot-out during the World Cup 2014 (Brazil vs. Chile): men cried, I cried, Neymar cried. I was done for. I loved it.

Rinaldo Barlassina, one of the most prominent italian referees at the time, was the victim of stone throwing during a match at Casale. After refusing to give a penalty, Barlassina used an umbrella to protect himself and he emerged unhurt. Ghirelli comments that 'it is unclear if this was thanks to his stoicism or to the fact that the stones had run out'.

Bunny crumpled to the ground, selling it harder than a soccer player in the penalty box. He cupped his face in his hands.

By this time (in mid-2012) the country had been without a functioning government for more than twenty years, and the city was a byword for chaos, lawlessness, corruption, and violence. But this wasn’t the Mogadishu we saw. Far from it: on the surface, the city was a picture of prosperity. Many shops and houses were freshly painted, and signs on many street corners advertised auto parts, courses in business and English, banks, money changers and remittance services, cellphones, processed food, powdered milk, cigarettes, drinks, clothes, and shoes. The Bakara market in the center of town had a monetary exchange, where the Somali shilling—a currency that has survived without a state or a central bank for more than twenty years—floated freely on market rates that were set and updated twice daily. There were restaurants, hotels, and a gelato shop, and many intersections had busy produce markets. The coffee shops were crowded with men watching soccer on satellite television and good-naturedly arguing about scores and penalties. Traffic flowed freely, with occasional blue-uniformed, unarmed Somali National Police officers (male and female) controlling intersections. Besides motorcycles, scooters, and cars, there were horse-drawn carts sharing the roads with trucks loaded above the gunwales with bananas, charcoal, or firewood. Offshore, fishing boats and coastal freighters moved about the harbor, and near the docks several flocks of goats and sheep were awaiting export to cities around the Red Sea and farther afield. Power lines festooned telegraph poles along the roads, many with complex nests of telephone wires connecting them to surrounding buildings. Most Somalis on the street seemed to prefer cellphones, though, and many traders kept up a constant chatter on their mobiles. Mogadishu was a fully functioning city.

By the 59th minute, the match was still scoreless when German striker Alexandra Popp ran down a lofted ball into the box. Julie Johnston, chasing, tugged her from behind. Popp fell, and the whistle blew. Penalty kick for Germany. This was it. This was the moment, it seemed, the Americans would lose the World Cup. It was a given, of course, that Germany would score this penalty kick. The Germans never missed in moments like this, and a goal would shift the momentum of the match. Hope Solo did the only thing she could do: stall. As Célia Šašić stepped up to the spot to take the kick, Solo sauntered off to the sideline slowly and got her water bottle. She took a sip. Paused. Scanned the crowd. Another sip. She strolled back slowly toward goal. She still had the water bottle in her hand. She wanted to let this moment linger. She wanted Šašić to think too much about the kick and let the nerves of the moment catch up to her. Finally, Solo took her spot. The whistle blew, and without even a nanosecond of hesitation, Šašić ran up to the ball and hit it, as if she couldn’t bear another moment of waiting. Solo guessed to the right, and Šašić’s shot was going left. But it kept going left and skipped wide. The pro-USA crowd at Olympic Stadium in Montreal erupted into a thunderclap that made the stands shake. The American players cheered as if they had just scored a goal. “We knew right then and there that we were going to win the World Cup,” Ali Krieger says. “That was it. That’s when we knew: This is ours.

When a similar penalty was called just six minutes later—Annike Krahn fouled Alex Morgan in the box—the Americans had Carli Lloyd step up to the spot. Lloyd was the exact opposite of Šašić. She didn’t break her focus from the ball, staring at the spot where she was going to hit it and ignoring everything else around her. When the whistle blew, a composed Lloyd calmly stepped up and smashed it into the back of the net. The

By the 59th minute, the match was still scoreless when German striker Alexandra Popp ran down a lofted ball into the box. Julie Johnston, chasing, tugged her from behind. Popp fell, and the whistle blew. Penalty kick for Germany. This was it. This was the moment, it seemed, the Americans would lose the World Cup. It was a given, of course, that Germany would score this penalty kick. The Germans never missed in moments like this, and a goal would shift the momentum of the match. Hope Solo did the only thing she could do: stall. As Célia Šašić stepped up to the spot to take the kick, Solo sauntered off to the sideline slowly and got her water bottle. She took a sip. Paused. Scanned the crowd. Another sip. She strolled back slowly toward goal. She still had the water bottle in her hand. She wanted to let this moment linger. She wanted Šašić to think too much about the kick and let the nerves of the moment catch up to her. Finally, Solo took her spot. The whistle blew, and without even a nanosecond of hesitation, Šašić ran up to the ball and hit it, as if she couldn’t bear another moment of waiting. Solo guessed to the right, and Šašić’s shot was going left. But it kept going left and skipped wide. The pro-USA crowd at Olympic Stadium in Montreal erupted into a thunderclap that made the stands shake. The American players cheered as if they had just scored a goal.

Bunny crumpled to the ground, selling it harder than a soccer player in the penalty box.

In the shootout that followed, Hope Solo saved one of Brazil’s penalty kicks, while the Americans buried all theirs. The Americans were advancing to the semifinal.

In the shootout that followed, Hope Solo saved one of Brazil’s penalty kicks, while the Americans buried all theirs. The Americans were advancing to the semifinal. The stunning last-second goal—Rapinoe’s cross and Wambach’s header—would captivate the nation back home. Suddenly a country that hadn’t been particularly attuned to this Women’s World Cup fell back in love with its national team. A team that had fallen off the radar since 2005 was thrust back into the spotlight again. If Abby Wambach worried in 2008 about the team not needing her, she proved her fears wrong at the perfect time.

Instead, Wambach planted her feet and jumped straight up into the air, thrusting her head toward the ball. She beat Andréia to the ball and snapped it toward the goal. Wambach’s eyes were closed, but the sound of the ball rattling the back of the net was unmistakable. Goal, USA. The score: 2–2. “OH, CAN YOU BELIEVE THIS?!” ESPN announcer Ian Darke shouted at the top of his lungs to American viewers through their TV sets. “ABBY WAMBACH HAS SAVED THE USA’S LIFE IN THIS WORLD CUP!” Wambach ran over to the corner flag and slid, releasing a primal scream. The players closest to her—Tobin Heath and Alex Morgan—hugged her first. Kelley O’Hara leapt off the bench and raced over to Wambach, and everyone else soon followed. Rapinoe fist-pumped furiously and pounded on her chest. It was perhaps the most exhilarating moment in the national team’s history—perhaps it could rival the 1999 World Cup win, which had fittingly happened exactly 12 years earlier. Either way, coming after 121 minutes and 19 seconds, it was the latest goal in World Cup history—men’s or women’s—and it was a thrilling boost for the Americans. There was no way they were going to lose to Brazil on penalty kicks now.

The Cougars had practiced forming a wall against such penalty kicks. It

Action Bias Among Elite Soccer Goalkeepers: The Case of Penalty Kicks’. Thompson reported: The academics analysed 286 penalty kicks and found that 94 per cent of the time the goalies dived to the right or the left – even though the chances of stopping the ball were highest when the goalie stayed in the centre. If that’s true, why do goalies almost always dive off to one side? Because, the academics theorised, the goalies are afraid of looking as if they’re doing nothing – and then missing the ball. Diving to one side, even if it decreases the chance of them catching the ball, makes them appear decisive. ‘They want to show that they’re doing something,’ says Michael Bar-Eli, one of the study’s authors. ‘Otherwise they look helpless, like they don’t know what to do.’16