Gareth Southgate identifies reason behind England penalty failures ahead of 2022 World Cup
- Planet Sport writer
- 29 March 2022
England boss Gareth Southgate says his players have already been set a penalty-practicing routine ahead of the World Cup in Qatar.
Penalties have been a long-standing Achilles heel for England in International tournaments.
Among their notable failures have been the World Cup semi-final in 1990, the Euro 96 semi-final, and the Euro 2020 final, with Southgate more aware than most about the pressures involved.
He missed the decisive penalty for England in the shoot-out against Germany in 1996, and it has motivated him to improve the comfort of Three Lions players from the spot.
He also believes that will be difficult, though, with the biggest problem being so few England players being the regular penalty takers for their clubs.
"We have gone into various details with the players of where we can improve upon to be world champions," Southgate said.
"We didn't have a chance to do that in such detail in the autumn as we had to get straight on to the focus of qualifying, so we felt this camp was a good time to start that. Penalties has been part of that.
"What is apparent, in terms of regular penalty takers for their club, we really only have Harry Kane, James Ward-Prowse.
"(Marcus) Rashford would have been, in terms of volume of penalties, the second highest in number, but Bruno Fernandes is their (Manchester United's) normal penalty taker and, when we played Italy, their top five had taken more than 40 penalties in competitive matches. Kane is at that level and Marcus is next at 20.
"So we will have to view that differently than just accept they are going to get practice at their clubs and they will be able to come in and that is the challenge we have set with some individual work.
"We think that is the right thing to do and, yes, it feels maybe they would think it is a bit early to do that, but essentially, if you take matchdays out and the day after a match, you are probably talking about 20 training days between now and that situation happening in a knock-out stage."
England missed more than half of their penalties in the final of Euro 2020, with Harry Kane and Harry Maguire the only players to convert.
