England-Portugal..the penalty spot

[Immortal Wombat]

IMO the ref had a terrible game. Totally partial. I'm willing to overlook the disallowed goal, proper or otherwise, cos frankly we didn't deserve to win that match.

[The Viceroy]

I think one of the BBC sports presentors best summed it up, "The best team won, but they shouldn't have"

Thing is, England seem to go into these matches, expecting the ref to be impartial, expecting to defend for 90% of the game and thinking that if only we get penalties, the laws of average's should put it in our favour ...

well .. the fact is, Not every ref is imparial, we never win when we spend 90% of the game in our own half (nor do we deserve to), and each time we go into a penalty shoot out, the odds of winning it our exactly the same as the last time .. in other words, we may as well throw everything for a win during extra time.

There was a load of good things to come out of this competition though, Ashley Cole was brilliant, Rooney was a marval, England on ocassions played the best football ive ever seen them play. I think Sven has done a good job up to now, and this is a great way to learn and improve before WC2006.

[Chemical Ollie]

Originally posted by Urban Ranger
He can be good with penalty kicks, ---

Yeah, especially that last one...

[Kropotkin]

It's really lame to try to blame it on the penalty spot as some people seems to. Beckham should obviously be experienced enough to be able to place the ball properly. And if the english managers had complained about the spot twice, shouldn't they have told him about it? After all, it's the same for everyone, isn't it? Anyhow, from my perspective it's a lot more valid to complain about the disallowed goal, even if I personally think it was the right decision by Urs Meier. Stop complaining about the referee if you don't want to start to look like a bunch of italians. The referee can make mistakes, but that wouldn't come as a suprise to a bunch of so called professional footballers. You have to be sure that you're better than the other team instead of waisting all your engery on the referee.

[Solly]

"Beckham should obviously be experienced enough to be able to place the ball properly"

His kicking action is poor. His standing (left) foot never has studs on the ground, but instead rolls onto the outside of his foot. So it's no wonder his penalty-taking is poor, he just can't shoot.

[reds4ever]

Originally posted by Park Avenue
"Beckham should obviously be experienced enough to be able to place the ball properly"

His kicking action is poor. His standing (left) foot never has studs on the ground, but instead rolls onto the outside of his foot. So it's no wonder his penalty-taking is poor, he just can't shoot.

Correct, it's a good action for getting curve on a ball (ie freekicks), but you don't need to do that to score a penalty.

[Solly]

"Correct, it's a good action for getting curve on a ball (ie freekicks)"

I'd dispute that as well - the curve comes from the kicking foot, not the standing foot. The standing foot needs to give you as great a stability as possible, and to do that you need studs in the ground?