The ‘penalty demon’ strikes again!

Last Friday’s heart-breaking failure of the Black Meteors to qualify for the Tokyo 2020 Olympics, via the penalty shoot-out in the just-ended CAF Under-23 African Cup of Nations, evokes a myriad of tear-jerking moments.

Four teams – hosts Egypt, Cote d’Ivoire and South Africa will be representing the continent in Japan  – the last two countries benefiting from Ghana’s pathetic penalty malaise to scrape through.

One too many, Ghana football has been swallowed up by the ‘penalty demon’ – throwing the nation into unending tears of torment.

That is why there are many football fans who have sworn not to watch penalty kicks involving Ghana, just to avoid further heart-breaks. You remember the Local Black Stars’ penalty loss to Senegal too, in last month’s WAFU Cup of Nations final?

Truth is that you need to muster a big heart to be able to watch our players dash for such dead balls.

A 35-year-old dyed-in-the-wool football fan, Daniel Nyamekye, does not have the heart to watch any penalty kicks involving Ghana.

On a particular night, he darted out of the room with electrifying pace before the penalty kicks were taken. He was scared-stiff! Even though the kicks could go either way, Nyamekye, reckoned it would not favour Ghana.

Lamentably, he had seen several of the spot-kicks turned piercingly sour and was not ready to suffer anymore heartache.  Predictably, he got it right! Believe it, he was no soothsayer, neither was he a seer.

This was what happened ahead of the penalty shoot-out between Ghana’s national Under-17 female team, Black Maidens and their Mexican counterparts during their quarter final clash at the 2018 FIFA U-17 World Cup tournament in Uruguay.

The two teams had battled out to a nerve-jangling, blistering 2-2 drawn game at the end of regulation with the Ghanaians letting in a late equaliser with eight minutes to go. But instead of waiting patiently for the kicks, Nyamekye decided to play it safe.

“I was becoming too emotional and hypertensive and thought the best thing to do was to avoid watching the shoot-out. Of course, I know when it comes to situations like these, you can’t trust Ghana,” he stated explicitly.

The poor fan is not in this alone. There are many others who have sworn not to watch penalty kicks involving Ghana, just to avoid further heart-breaks. Nyamekye agrees.

“It’s true. I have a good number of friends who don’t watch penalty kicks in matches involving Ghana and they would rather feel homey hearing the result later even if we lose.”

So, suffice to say that the Maidens crumbled 2-4 to the Mexicans during the kicks, failing to meet their sworn semi-final target in Uruguay.  It is the third time the smart-as-a-whip Ghanaian ladies had slumped at this stage of the competition.

Interestingly, on the same night in Windhoek, the men senior national Team B side had also lost 1-4 on penalties to Namibia in a special international friendly game in that country.

It is said that Ghanaian sides (clubs, national teams) have won only two of last 18 penalty shoot-outs in international football. If that is not disturbingly scary, one wonders what else would be!

Indeed, the agony and melancholy of defeat during the lottery of penalty kicks can live with the football fans forever – maybe, the player too. Of course, when there is victory, the irrepressible joy that comes with it can also be so uplifting.

In  recent times, Ghana football at the senior level has suffered at the icy hands of the shoot-out – to the extent that some believe our football is under some kind of curse or malediction.  Well, not too sure what it is.

What is limpidly clear is that Ghana often slumps shoddily when it comes to the post-game-dead-ball kicks.

Many are still at a loss as to how Ghana’s Black Meteors failed to make it to Tokyo, despite being given two lifelines in 96 hours. In the first instance, the Meteors rallied up to draw 2-2 in the semi-final encounter against Cote d’Ivoire in the CAF Under-23 African Cup of Nations (AFCON), before crashing at the spot-kicks.

Then came the third-place play-off that ended 2-2 with Ghana grabbing a last-gasp redeemer. The penalty kicks were quickly invoked. A win for the Meteors was going to send them to Ghana’s first Olympic Games in 16 years. They were tipped to make amends. But sadly, after throwing away their first kick, the South Africans went ahead to win 6-5. The Meteors were out rather distressingly!

One of the most recent of what appears to be a penalty hoodoo happened in 2015 when Ghana’s Black Stars crashed 8-9 in the finale of the African Cup of Nations, following a barren game after extra time in the Equatorial Guinea city of Bata.

It was a second title for the Ivorians whose only previous success came when they also accounted for Ghana in a similar post-match marathon shootout 11-10 in Dakar in 1992.  A total of 22 kicks were needed to settle the title in Bata with the Ivorians missing their first two attempts.

First two kicks missed! That even makes it more excruciating and heart-rending! Ghana’s agonising shoot-out defeat means the four-time champions are still waiting for their first Nations Cup success since 1982.

What may yet pose as big test is our ability to banish our penalty demons. Indeed, as we prepare for the domestic league, let us plan effectively towards exorcising the penalty hex which has haunted our football for God knows how long.

As emotional as they are, penalty kicks in general and shoot-outs in particular are not just gambles, according to research. Behavioral economics research shows that there are methods that both the kicker and the goalkeeper can use to gain an edge, and one of the most crucial factors takes place before the shootout even begins: which team goes first.

But for researchers, penalty kick shootouts provide a prime natural experiment in sports psychology and a useful behavioral model for game theory.

“If you look at football as a game, it’s very intricate,” Tom Vandebroek, a sports economics researcher now working as a professional coach, once said. “Whereas if you look at penalty shootouts, it’s very good example of a natural experiment: The stakes are high, the effort is relatively low. It’s one against one. It’s repeated. The behaviour of the goalkeeper and the player is kind of simultaneous.”

Vandebroek co-wrote a 2016 study in the Journal of Sports Economics on the psychological pressure behind penalty kicks. The results showed that strategising should begin at the coin toss for who goes first.

He explained that during a shootout, teams alternate between kicks, which create a discrepancy in the stakes depending on the score of the shootout. For example, if the score is 5-4 after nine shots, the final kicker bears a massive psychological burden that can then cause them to choke.

Writing in a 2003 paper in the Review of Economic Studies, Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, a professor at the London School of Economics, noted that penalty scoring rates during regulation matches decreased as the game wore on.

This is “not because the goalkeeper’s saves increase but because kickers shoot wide, to the goalpost, or to the crossbar more often than earlier in the game. This may be attributed to nervousness or kickers being tired at the end of the game.”

Based on player interviews, nervousness seemed to be the likelier explanation, according to Palacios-Huerta. So it stands to reason that players are most nervous during the tie-breaking round of penalty kicks at the end of a long match.

True! Meteors’ Edward Sarpong, glaringly, was full of nerves as he dashed to take what would have been his team’s winning penalty against South Africa in the third-place match.

Noticeably, edginess, tenseness, nerves and weariness have been identified as one of the possible causes of penalty misses and it is high time our technical men and handlers of our national teams – especially the Black Stars, woke up to navigate around this challenge.

This is where the work of a psychologist becomes more pronounced and it is important we get one on board to assist our ‘mentally fragile’ players in this regard. 

Penalty kicks in football is among the highest pressure moments in all of sports, but we can make the most of it if we plot our tactics very well. As well as the scientific and technical aspects of improving the rates of conversion, an International Football Agency, Prozone Sports, also cements the fact that, the art of penalty taking is not just a lottery. It has more to do to having it right.

Many of Ghana’s local coaches – from J.E Sarpong, Abukari Damba and Frimpong Manso among others, believe penalty kicks is a technique that should be thought well right at the formative level. So, let us start now.

Indeed, let us not go to the Nations Cupin 2021 feeling petrified and low on confidence because of a terrifying past at the kicks!

Let us find the panacea to exorcising the penalty ‘demon’ now!

A lot of Ghanaians have expressed grave concern about the harrowing situation and have suggested going back to the 80s where the Ghana Football Association (GFA) at the time decided to invoke penalty kicks to determine the winner when league games ended in a stalemate.

The winner of the kicks bags two points, while the loser manages with a point. It was a smart-as-a-whip way of making our players master the art of penalty taking since it was going to be part of their training regime in their respective clubs.

Interestingly, that system was abandoned after just a season. Maybe, the new GFA administration headed by Kurt E.S Okraku, might want to take a critical look at it again, especially when his assumption of office was bitingly greeted with the Meteors elimination from the Tokyo Olympics qualifiers, through the lottery of penalty kicks.

BY JOHN VIGAH