Six weeks later, in the European Championship quarter-final, Cole stepped up
for England in that shoot-out against Italy. His shot was weak, and it was
saved. It wasn’t just a matter of Cole scoring for Chelsea and not for
England; the two penalties he took were totally different, as was his body
language and, we can only assume, his mind-set too. I asked players and
coaches close to Cole why the two penalties were so different, and they
could not come up with an answer. It seemed to me that for Cole, the idea
had already taken root that winning a shoot-out with England was an almost
impossible task.

_{David Beckham fires over the bar against Portugalin 2004 (Photo:
Reuters)}

As we approach another major tournament, the prospect of this England team
losing on penalties looms large yet again. England has lost six of their
seven penalty shoot-outs, the worst record (with a win ratio of only 14%) of
any major nation with more than five shoot-outs to their name.

As part of my research into penalty-kicks for my book, Twelve
Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty,
I spoke to a player from every team that has beaten England on penalties, to
find out where they thought we had been going wrong. They all had differing
opinions, but one common element shone through: it was all about the ability
to perform under pressure.

I ended up finding some answers in an unlikely setting: overlooking a lake
next to the Norwegian Olympic training-camp just north of Oslo. This was
where Dr Geir Jordet,
a former footballer and now Director of Psychology at the Norwegian Centre
of Football Excellence, has his office. Jordet looked for significant
differences between shooting high or low, with power or accuracy, or the
ideal number of steps in the run-up, and came up with nothing. “The big
effects were all about pressure and how you deal with stress. It was not
about football, but psychology,” he told me.

One of these psychological factors helped to explain Cole’s penalty miss.
Jordet wrote an academic study, ‘Team history and choking under pressure in
major soccer penalty shootouts’, on the effect that losing one or two
preceding shoot-outs had on the next shoot-out. The conclusion? England is
more likely to lose a shoot-out in its next shoot-out because it had lost
its last two shoot-outs (in fact, England has lost its last five shoot-outs,
but Jordet could not run analysis on that, because no other national team
has managed that feat).

The results showed that a player’s likelihood of converting a penalty for a
team whose last two shoot-outs ended in defeat drop considerably, to 57%,
even if that player was not part of the team at the time of those defeats.
The winning habit is also contagious, and the chances of scoring for a side
that has won its last two shoot-outs rises to 89%. The cycle of defeat is a
vicious one.

_{Gareth Southgate fluffs his kick against Germanyin Euro '96
(Photo: PA)}

Jordet also pinpointed a sign of stress among England’s penalty-takers: they
rushed their kicks. England players’ response time from the referee blowing
his whistle – to indicate the kick can be taken – is, on average, 0.28
seconds (by comparison, Usain Bolt’s average reaction time is around 0.17
seconds). No nation is faster at taking penalties than England. As Gareth
Southgate put it in his book Woody
and Nord: A Football Friendship: “All I wanted was the ball: put it
on the spot, get it over and done with.” (He missed too.)

England might not have a penalty shoot-out in Brazil but if they do, be
worried about the players who react very quickly to the referee’s whistle.
Any player good enough to play for England should be able to score with a
free shot from just twelve yards away. Technique has nothing to do with it.
As Jordet said: “For these guys, it comes down to pure psychology, and the
fascination of the shoot-out is that it puts psychology in pole position.”

Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty by Ben
Lyttleton (Bantam Press, RRP £14.99) is available to order from Telegraph
Books at £12.99 + £1.35 pp. Call 0844 871 1514 or visit books.telegraph.co.uk