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The psychology of the penalty shootout: Mentally preparing to score, or save, a game-defining goal

Walk the walk, take your time, breathe and score. Sounds simple, doesn't it? But as Euro 2020 prepares to enter the knockout stage, and with it coming the jeopardy of a penalty shootout, you can be sure that at least one player will forget the basic principles of scoring with a free shot from 12 yards and send his team crashing out of the competition.

That is perhaps a brutal way of looking at it. When you add in the pressure of walking from the centre circle to the penalty spot, maybe towards a set of hostile opposition supporters and an imposing goalkeeper, and then think about the implications of failure and triggering the disappointment of millions of people, the apparently simple task becomes an altogether different challenge.