“With Ron Vlaar missing a penalty for Holland against Argentina in the World Cup semi-final, and me being an Aston Villa supporter, I started wondering which English league club players are the worst when it comes to shootouts at international level (for any nation)?” asked Paul Tidey in the summer of 2014. “I think every Villa player who has taken a penalty in an international shootout since Gareth Southgate in 1996 has missed!”
So let’s get this straight, Paul: you want us to trawl through every shootout in the history of the World Cup, European Championship, Copa América, Africa Cup of Nations, Asian Cup, Oceania Nations Cup and Confederations Cup and check which club each and every taker was playing for when they stepped up to the spot? Do you really think we have nothing better to do? Oh. Right then, back in a jiffy …It turns out that Paul is right: no Villa player has scored in a shootout at a major international tournament since Southgate’s failure do so for England at Euro 96. Vlaar, Darius Vassell and Olof Mellberg have all tried since then and ended up wishing they hadn’t. In fact, the only Villa players ever to score for their country in a shootout are David Platt v West Germany in 1990 and Tony Cascarino, who scuffed an effort into the net for the Republic of Ireland against Romania at the 1990 World Cup only three months after becoming Villa’s record signing (incidentally, his tally of 11 goals in 46 matches for Villa means Cascarino could also be in the running as a decent answer to the next question, below). Jean II Makoun scored for Cameroon in their epic 12-11 shootout victory over Ivory Coast at the 2006 Africa Cup of Nations but that, of course, was when the midfielder was at Lille, five years before he became a Villan.As for the English club with the most prolific scorers in international shootouts, that is Arsenal (14), with Chelsea (10) second, although Chelsea players have also been responsible for five misses, more than any other English club – but not quite as many as AC Milan, whose players have managed to miss 10 times in international tournaments (and only score nine times). The club with the most successful takers, meanwhile, is Barcelona, with 21 successful spot-kicks (and five misses).As a quick update to this, we can confirm the record still stands. The closest we can get is Jordan Ayew’s successful kick for Ghana in the 2015 Africa Cup of Nations final against Ivory Coast. Perhaps inspired by his steely nerve, Villa signed him six months later.
I remember physically shitting myself during the shootout against Bolton yet we took some very composed penalties.
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Topic: Villa Players - Terminally Crap In Shoot-Outs (Read 2294 times)
