There are penalty kicks and then there are Statement Penalty Kicks. Even the best players approach this trial from 12 yards with a binary sense of dread. Relief or disaster: these are the only sensible outcomes. Except, of course, when there’s a third option, the penalty that becomes an act of stagecraft.
Who could forget Andrea Pirlo pulling the plug on Joe Hart in Kyiv in 2012 with the most impossibly light, fluffy, airy Panenka, a penalty kick that took Hart gently by the elbow and said, do sit down, the grownups are talking. Or David Luiz smashing the ball into the stanchion with Chelsea trailing in the 2012 Champions League final shootout, a moment of such fearless, ringlet-tossing abandon it changed the weather completely: actually, we’re coming after you.
