European Championship Stories: 1976, The Birth of the Penalty Shootout

Drawn matches can't be levelled out in knockout matches in the same way as they are in the league, and one of the first penalty shootouts remains one of the most famous.

It has been suggested more than once that the inner beauty of football is to be found in its mixture of simplicity and complexity. For the game to get under your skin in the first place isn’t difficult but, for all the analysis of tactics and formations which seems occasionally to dominate all other discussion of matches in themselves, football remains enchantingly out of reach.

What we can say, however, is that the most celebrated moments in the history of game have involved extraordinary luck, brilliant skill, intuitiveness, improvisation or occasionally even a little sang froid, and somewhere between this assortment we find a part of the culture of the game that has grown with the televising of the game – the penalty shoot-out.