Liverpool star Luis Diaz did not believe that Fabinho had a Panenka penalty in him ahead of the Carabao Cup final, the Brazilian has revealed.
When Fabinho stepped up for the Reds at Wembley, he had scored 23 of his 24 career spot-kicks having been a regular taker at Monaco before his move to Anfield, where he netted twice from 12 yards earlier in the campaign.
With the shootout on a knife edge and eventually only ended when Chelsea goalkeeper Kepa Arrizabalaga blazed his effort over, the pressure was on. Yet, Fabinho simply chipped the ball home to make it 2-1 to Liverpool.
“The day before, I tried to do a Panenka,” the midfielder recalled on Monday. “It was just me and Luis Diaz, with no goalkeeper in the goal.
“I told him, ‘Tomorrow if it goes to pens, I will shoot it like this’. He didn’t believe me! But when I was walking to the box to take the penalty, it was in my mind to shoot a Panenka. It worked!
“When you shoot a penalty like this, you know that if you miss, when you come back to the dressing room everyone will kill you. But it was in my mind that I would take it like this, and that I could do it.”
The trophy lift could be the first of an unprecedented quadruple this season, with an FA Cup quarter-final and Premier League title push to come, plus Tuesday’s Champions League second leg with Inter Milan.
“It was good for us to win Carabao Cup, the first competition possible for us to win,” he stated.
“The way we won the cup was special for everyone. When you win one trophy, it's normal that people talk about Liverpool winning four, but I'm not thinking too much about it.
“It's really hard to win three or four trophies. It was hard to recover after the Chelsea final. But the players who played against Norwich and West Ham did really well, and we are still alive in FA Cup and in the fight for Premier League.”
