World Cup Rant #1

There's one thing that the Scottish part of my family and I agree on.

As Chris says, Alan Hansen is a fudd.

They don't like him up there because of his clear leanings towards the English at international level, while I don't like him for his ability to talk for hours on end without adding any understanding to my viewing of proceedings. When I see the right winger skip past the left-back and pull it back perfectly for the on-rushing midfielder, I want to know about the tactical decisions made at coaching level that resulted in such a fine piece of football, insights that an ex-player might be able to impart, rather than just watching a replay and have some Captain Scarlet villain describe exactly what I can clearly see for myself.

Ian Wright talks some jingoistic nonsense, but at least he gives you an insight into what the players are feeling.

However, there's one sentence which you can guarantee will be said by these same football experts over the next five weeks, which really gets my proverbial goat.

"Penalties, you can't really practice them, can you Gary."

Yes! Yes you can!

It's probably the easiest thing in football to practice. Put the ball down on the spot and put it in, it's not hard. Repeat this two or three hundred times, so that when the potential opportunity arises, you know with 100% surety that you are going to at least hit the target. Practice well enough, and no goal-keeper in the world can stop them.

"You can't replicate the pressure"

True, but at least you can take some of the pressure off by knowing you've practiced & practiced & practiced. The fact that it is a World Cup match in front of 80,000 spectators and millions on the TV adds a certain sense of occasion, but no more that it had for the previous three hours the players have been in the stadium. They don't suddenly let people in towards the end of the game, they've been there for the previous 120 minutes playing time. If the players are such gibbering wrecks that they are incapable of hitting a target of 192 square feet from 12 yards, they really shouldn't be there in the first place. They all play in front of thousands week in week out, they're hardly amateurs.

Ask any of the England squad what their golf handicap is, and I'll bet the majority will reply in single figures. Admittedly, some can't count past 9, but most of the others practice golf to such an extent that they'd figure well in a pro-am tournament. A pointless waste of time, unless FIFA are thinking about replacing the penalty shoot-out with the ten-yard bucket challenge to decide drawn games.

There's a very good reason why airline pilots practice for hours on simulators. You wouldn't want to be sat on a plane and be told the pilot has never practiced landing at Heathrow in bad weather with an engine on fire before because he couldn't replicate the pressure of having 400 passengers sat behind him.

If you crash & burn before reaching your intended destination, blame the pilot.

The penalties in 1998 (Argentina) were an embarrassment, two of the players openly admitting they'd NEVER taken a penalty before. Funnily enough, they both missed.

Compare that to the semi-final of the same year, Brazil v Holland. The Dutch struggling to keep theirs on target while the Brazilians were more concerned over which part of the body they would be using to put them in with. I'm sure I saw at least two of them blind-folding each other for a laugh before sticking them in the top corner, just because they could.

It's been 10 years since the last penalty shoot out success against Spain (with THAT Pearce penalty). England are due a touch of luck, but as Gary Player once said; "The more I practice, the luckier I get"