23 June 2006

Confidence and penalty taking.

They say 'you can't train for penalty shootouts' or so the cliche goes. Well if that is true, it is true for all teams, yet the evidence suggests some teams are much better at penalty taking than others. Famously the Germans are amongst the best, and the Italians and English are amonst the worst.

You can't easily change the character of a player to improve his confidence. But confidence also comes from being well practised and confidence ultimately comes from the knowledge imparted to the players by the coach. Is Sven up to the job? Has he done his homework on Ecuador?

Luckily for us, Ecuador's record in penalty shootouts is even worse than us. Lets just hope we can win without a shootout, though, eh?

Overall Records
Team World Cup Euro N. Cup Copa America TOTAL % wins
Wins/Loss Wins/Loss Wins/Loss Wins/Loss

Argentina 3/0 2/2 5/2 71 %
Brazil 2/1 3/2 5/3 63 %
Germany 3/0 1/1 4/1 80 %
France 2/1 1/1 3/2 60 %
Uruguay 3/3 3/3 50 %
Czechoslovakia 2/0 2/0 100 %
Colombia 2/1 2/1 67 %
Mexico 0/2 2/1 2/3 40 %
Spain 1/2 1/1 2/3 40 %
Belgium 1/0 1/0 100 %
Bulgaria 1/0 1/0 100 %
Czech Rep. 1/0 1/0 100 %
Honduras 1/0 1/0 100 %
Korea Rep. 1/0 1/0 100 %
Portugal 1/0 1/0 100 %
United States 1/0 1/0 100 %
Denmark 1/1 1/1 50 %
Rep. Ireland 1/1 1/1 50 %
Sweden 1/0 0/1 1/1 50 %
England 0/2 1/2 1/4 20 %
Italy 0/3 1/1 1/4 20 %
Netherlands 0/1 1/3 1/4 20 %
Chile 0/1 0/1 0 %
Ecuador 0/1 0/1 0 %
Peru 0/1 0/1 0 %
Yugoslavia 0/1 0/1 0 %
Paraguay 0/2 0/2 0 %
Romania 0/2 0/2 0 %

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