Euro 2016 shows us why penalty misses are the best

On Wednesday afternoon, in Saint-Denis in the north of Paris, Austrian center back Aleksandar Dragovic gathered his thoughts, took a deep breath and missed a penalty. Behind the goal he had been aiming for and the post he had hit, thousands of Iceland fans hooted in relieved jubilation; away at the other end, and sprinkled around all the rest of the ground, many more Austrians made noises of disappointment and despair: some sighed, some swore and some just shouted at the sky. Stupid sky.

There was a third faction in the stadium, however. The neutrals. Major tournament games always have a fairly high proportion of neutral fans, and for a game such as this one, in (or at least, for official reasons, near) Paris and between two relatively small nations, there were tickets available for pretty much anybody who wanted and could afford one. So Dragovic’s miss was watched by hundreds of fans of France, a fair few of both Irelands, at least one Wales and even a handful of Netherlands fans, who weren’t going to let their country’s failure to qualify for the tournament ruin their holiday.

And on the whole those neutrals, when the ball hit the post, took Iceland’s part. They may not have shouted quite so loudly or for so long, but there was definite celebration amongst those who technically didn’t really care one way or the other.

Partly that’s down to Iceland being Iceland: with their Errea kits, their clever, scampering, whole-hearted football and their clear unbridled delight at being in the tournament, the Icelanders are precisely the kind of team that decent-minded folk end up cheering for. It helped that Austria had bigger names on the field and more fans in the stand. That’s an imbalance in need of redress. Underdogs are there for the adoption.

But there’s also something about penalties, and specifically penalty misses, that generate responses above and beyond the usual. Austria putting a shot over the bar got something like an “Oooooh” from the neutral; Dragovic’s penalty got something like a “Ohwheeeeeeeeeyhahahaha.” The distinction, perhaps, lies in the artificiality of penalties, in their staged nature. And also in their unfairness.

Because they are unfair. Not necessarily the awarding of them, not always, though certainly the Iceland players weren’t ever so respectful of the referee’s decision. Just in the simple balance of the tasks of those involved. The attacker holds all the advantages, and most penalties end in goals. It’s basically bullying for goalkeepers. A man with a whistle orders the keeper to stand in his goal, tells him he can’t move until it’s basically too late, then lets the other lot’s best finisher kick the ball out of his reach. Cruel and unusual. Only a monster could fail to take the keeper’s part.

And they are artificial. Football, fundamentally a fluid sport, doesn’t often contrive moments of simple, isolated stillness. Of full and undivided attention. In the stadium, in the normal run of things, half the crowd don’t even see what’s happening half the time: they’re checking their phones, or they’re looking to see who spilled 0.5 percent lager down their back, or they’ve just noticed that there’s a small pocket of Netherlands fans stuck high in a corner. Your correspondent, for example, missed the actual Austrian penalty decision because he moved his foot, trod on something oddly squishy and looked to see what it was. It was half a hot dog.

For the kick itself, though, the only people not looking are those that can’t bear to. Everybody else is locked in. Everybody is going to have a shout. And if the underdog (general: the team) and the underdog (specific: the goalkeeper) come out on the right side, that shout’s going to be, well, something a lot like “Ohwheeeeeeeeeyhahahaha.”

Of course, the personalities involved factor in as well. Sergio Ramos’ miss against Croatia was greeted with widespread amusement in at least one French bar because he was Sergio Ramos and they were Spain; Croatia’s eventual late winner didn’t raise half the chuckles. And the gold standard for this came last week, when — in what we can only assume were scenes repeated across the continent — Cristiano Ronaldo’s inability to miss the post from 12 yards was greeted (in a Marseille bar stuffed with happily lubricated Hungary, Iceland, England, Wales and France fans) with scenes of purest bedlam. People were up on chairs, strangers were embracing one another, people went running round high-fiving random passersby. The entire European project — saving the presence of one dejected Portugal fan in the corner, who looked utterly broken — brought together in one delicious moment of collective schadenfreude.

Such is the power of Ronaldo’s personality, yes. But such, too, is the magnifying power of the penalty miss.