Practice makes perfect – England doing a lot of penalty preparation at Euro 2024
Harry Kane is England’s number-one penalty taker (Nick Potts/PA) (PA Archive)
England have been “doing a lot of work” on penalties as Gareth Southgate’s side gear up for the Euro 2024 knockout phase.
The national team have long struggled from the spot in shoot-outs, most recently in the European Championship final at Wembley three years ago.
England’s agonising defeat to Italy came after Southgate – who famously missed his penalty in the Euro 96 semi-final against Germany – had overseen an improvement in their spot-kicks record.
The 2018 World Cup last-16 shoot-out win over Colombia was followed by another triumph on spot-kicks in the 2019 Nations League third-placed play-off against Switzerland.
Asked if the practice has started for penalties, defender Marc Guehi said: “Yeah, we’ve been doing a lot of work.
“The work’s been going really well across the team on penalties. It’s important to make sure we’re ready.”
England’s press officer interjected when another question was asked about how they have prepared, saying they did not want to give away any “competitive advantage”.
Fellow defender Ezri Konsa was also warned about divulging too much information about their penalty preparations.
“It’s something we’ve been doing any way, it was regardless of if we went through or not,” the Aston Villa player said.
The work’s been going really well across the team on penalties. It’s important to make sure we’re ready
Marc Guehi
“It’s something that we like to practice any way. We’ve been practising it after training, a few players go off and practice penalties.
“Look, we’re not thinking about going to penalties on Sunday, but if it comes to it, we’ll be well prepared.”
Konsa says he would be confident if it came down to penalties in Germany, where team-mate Guehi will not be repeating a nonchalant spot-kick that went viral in 2019.
Asked about the no-look penalty for Chelsea against Dinamo Zagreb in the UEFA Youth League, he said with a smile: “Never, never, never, ever again!
“That’ll stay wherever it is. If keepers have a look on the internet, but I don’t think they’re searching for me on Google or anything anyway. That’s going to stay where it is, I don’t think that’s going to come out again.”