According to Maxime Bossis, it was an error that would never have been made these days. “No one told me he always dived on the same side. It was another world,” said the former France defender in an interview in July. “Today a coach or a player would have come to tell me: ‘Watch out, he always dives to his right!”
It is more than 40 years since Bossis entered the history books as the first player whose miss in a World Cup penalty shootout led – via an opponent’s successful spot-kick – to his country’s elimination. Introduced by Fifa for the 1982 tournament in Spain to replace the policy of replaying a drawn game, the first took place in Seville and saw – you guessed it – West Germany emerge victorious against France.
