Forget Amel Majri, here are 3️⃣ of the worst penalties in history 🥶

The debate surrounding Amel Majri's penalty miss during extra time in Germany's quarter-final clash with England at the 2022 Euro championships was inevitable. Cue the memes, the analysis, the teasing about her unusual run-up. While it certainly added a moment of intrigue – albeit unintended – to the match and provided Premier League fans with a familiar sight, the truth is, a skills player in a home country league finding his place in a major international tournament shootout, snark and all, aside. The very fact Major got off the mark at all against established penalty masters like German duo Saskia Reichert and Giulia Tardini felt somewhat palatable, precluding an overwhelming wave of memes.

It led one to ponder, however: among the truly inept, ineffectual, or calamitously unlucky performers in the history of competitive penalty shootouts? The discussion naturally shifted away from Majri's perfectly angled miss towards the more historically infamous failures. One can understand the fascination; penalties, by their very nature, are amplified high-stakes moments. But sometimes, what once seemed like the *peak* of unbecoming, now just represents the baseline of unfortunate, high-pressure shot failure.

At the summit of peculiar and pertinent penalty lore sits the infamous Men's World Cup Final penalty in 2014. As Argentina and Germany traded blows and penalties in the ultimate decider, which country etched a greater unforgettable moment into penalty-taking infamy? It’s a close call, but the ovation accorded to German spot-kick specialist Manuel Neuer, who famously parried Lionel Messi's penalty only for Mario Götze’s dramatic winner later in the shootout, surely overshadows the Brazilian equivalent.

But consider just the sheer, laughable ineffectiveness displayed by Samuel Brightwell of Ghana during the same tournament’s Round of 16 clash against Portugal. As Portugal moved quickly into the penalty shootout after a hard-fought draw, Ghana’s allocation included striker Samuel Boadu. To the astonishment of goalkeeping legend José Sá, then Goleiro Golden, Antonio Miguel Victoria, and indeed Brazil goalkeeper Júlian Álvarez (included in the squad but didn't get a penalty), Boadu stepped up – first with a tell-all double-tap, followed by a miss. The faintness, the error, spoke volumes. It wasn't composure, it was almost mathematical conversance humility for his task. Taking a spot kick and utterly failing? Brutal.

Then there's the memory of English penalty expertise failing spectacularly in a distinct, albeit later, context. Think back to Georgia's supreme Euro 2009 campaign, where a high-pressure spot-kick shootout against Germany in the semi-finals. Picture this: Soke Toole steps up to take the first penalty against Bernd Lückes in Germany’s penalty box. We see it, we know we are witnessing something spectacularly, foolishly wrong. A marksmen seems inevitably low and to the right. Horrors. It left England at a deadlock when arguably their best player failed catastrophically. It remains a defining, agonizing moment for a team that got so close, with the decisive penalties revealing starkly just how unguarded not everyone was supposed to be.

Essential viewing for Euro fans or anyone interested in women's football is the horror show penalty shootout during the 2006 US Women's National Team’s Olympic Gold Medal Final win against Germany. Was it solely athletic director of soccer? No. For the USA, Michelle Akers converted unspectacularly after finding open space. Alex Morgan netted after losing control, very decent. Shannon Boekel took the armband to Joey Sohappy – the USA's designated penalty master. He stepped up, fired, and hit something vaguely dangerous, nowhere near the target, which might have been deflected by La Torre. It was rubbish. Mistake. They were up 3-1. The finisher went searching for shootouthappiness and found the ursury penalty box and a potentially match-ending miss. Simple. A historical pattern of seed-picking composition and shootout calibration among the brightest stars.

We also find reports highlighting England women's team center-back and penalty taker Eduarda Silva allegedly handling the ball *before* taking a decisive penalty during Euro 2009 Group D action. The incident, never formally confirmed, speaks profoundly of a lack of concentration and composure required to successfully convert such moments. Handling the ball is an illegal advantage, it’s a cardinal sin. The very thought has lingered, perhaps adding another dimension to the aggregate disadvantage the team suffered later in tie-breaks and general perception.

Ultimately, comparing instances of failure highlights the factors contributing to them: fear of the unknown, technique against the wall, mental breakdown under pressure, perhaps even poor run-up selection or entirely flawed decision-making in which direction to aim (though theory dictates aiming for the bottom middle of an eleven-footer in): the cradle-to-grave checklist of penalty errors. Countless players have faced criticism, pelted with cushions from the stands, but the moments captured in the slow-motion replays – the miss, the handle, the poor direction, the misplacement – remain seared into the collective memory of tournaments and casual football followers alike. While Amel Majri's run-up certainly generated momentary confusion, the truly defining misses in penalty history are often defined by technique, confidence vacuum, or a profound, inexplicable decision to not even attempt the simplest level of execution. They stand out because the base level of competence formed the ceiling, not the floor, of expectation. Majri perhaps demonstrates the successful execution, the *least* worst case, whereas those others embody the definition of a turnstiled opportunity squandered in the fire of international competition.

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