Embarrassing, so embarrassing.
In the match between France and Portugal, although both sides had a lot of shots, the quality of the shots was too poor, and both sides slowed down the pace at the last moment, on the one hand, they were afraid of the opponent's counterattack, and on the other hand, the two sides seemed to have reached a consensus on the penalty shootout. Of course it's good to have a chance to kill, but if you don't, then take a penalty, there's nothing wrong with it.
At this juncture, perhaps many Portuguese fans are confident, because they just witnessed the birth of a new goalkeeper three days ago, Diogo Costa, facing Slovenia, saved three penalties in a row and kept a clean sheet against the opponent. In fact, Costa has replaced Patricio for several years as Portugal's first goalkeeper, but over the years, he seems to have not had a strong presence. And this time, he is finally out of the circle.
With such a goalkeeper who is good at saving penalty kicks, Portuguese fans may be eager to take penalties immediately and advance as soon as possible. Anyway, it's sure to win.
Where does the confidence come from?
Actually, I also support Portugal because of Cristiano Ronaldo. But at the time, as the race drew to a close, I had a bad feeling. A lot of people think that Costa is a penalty goalkeeper who can settle everything, but I think that Costa has run out of luck, or that the French players are not as ineffective as the three Slovenian players.
Sure enough, Costa's performance in the penalty shootout was not as good as Maignan's. Although Felix's penalty hit the post and was not saved by Maignan, after a few rounds, Maignan guessed the direction more often than Costa. In other words, Costa played very mediocre this time, and perhaps, this is his norm.
It is easy to make a god, but it is difficult to test a god. You created God, don't you see if he defeated a top demon or a rabble?
In just three or four days, Costa used his own experience to tell us a fact - in this world, how can there be any penalty kick god? Yes, it's just players who don't take penalties, or who take penalties badly. It is their foil that makes people mistakenly believe that the penalty goal god exists.
In fact, if you look at the penalties taken by players other than Felix in this game, you can see that there is basically nothing the goalkeeper can do about really high-quality penalty kicks. The matter of penalty kicks itself tends to favor the penalty taker. In other words, the probability of scoring a penalty is much greater than not scoring a goal. Therefore, it is natural to score a penalty, and if you don't score a penalty, you will be taken out and criticized. And what about the goalkeeper? Since they are completely passive in this link, they are not to blame for the goal, but if they are saved, they are the heroes.
Therefore, there is not much that goalkeepers can do in penalty shootouts. The reason why we have witnessed so many so-called penalty goalkeepers, you can go back and see how they performed, is it because they really used their saving skills to the extreme, or because the opponent took the penalty so badly?
Take Costa's triple save as an example, do you really think that Costa's save is technically equivalent to watching Maradona's goal of the century? Not at all. First, Costa did bet on the direction of the Slovenian player's shot, and second, the opponent's penalty balls were all half-high balls, which is the goalkeeper's favorite height, and the power is not very good. It was these three bad penalties that made Costa a god. But this god can't stand up to scrutiny.
After all, you can't guess right every time, and every penalty shootout, how well your opponent's goalkeeper, your teammates, the opposing players, these people play, will affect your results.
Of course, you could say that Big Martin won many penalty shoot-outs, as well as Bounou, and Santo Tordo back then. But, Big Martin is so good, isn't he just playing for Aston Villa? Didn't you see Real Madrid, Barcelona and Bayern favor him? In fact, everyone is not stupid, they all know that penalty shootouts are full of luck, metaphysical components, and the coefficient of correlation with strength is not large.
Finally, let's end with Goyechea's experience of saving a penalty. Goyechea said that there are three realms of penalty shooting, first, trying to get information from the actions of the penalty taker, but the success rate is extremely low, second, the success rate is slightly higher when saving a corner, and third, judging by feeling, the success rate is the highest. And, he thinks he's the third.
Cow, right? But does it feel that he said so much, as if he didn't say anything.