The long walk: preparing for the pressure of the World Cup
Having looked at the influence of heat and altitude and travel and match demands at the 2026 World Cup, I’ll now turn my attention to the next topic in my World Cup preparation series: preparing for pressure.
High pressure and low performance
Its 1996. I’m 9 years old, and I love football. I play football before school, during breaktime at school, and after school. I play football at the weekends, and I play football all day in the school holidays. If there is a football match on TV, I watch it. England are hosting the 1996 European Championships; so far, they have drawn with Switzerland, beaten Scotland and the Netherlands to advance through their group, and then beaten Spain in the quarter-finals. Now, in the semi-finals, England face Germany—the team that knocked England out of the 1990 World Cup (on penalties), and who England beat to win the 1966 World Cup.
As is common with the England football team, they play well, but ultimately fall short. They take an early lead, before getting pegged back. In extra time, they hit the post. Eventually, inevitably, the game goes—again—to penalties. After the standard five penalties each, it’s 5-5 – both teams have scored all of their penalties. Then up steps Gareth Southgate, the England centre-back. He has taken one penalty in his professional career (which he missed); with no-one else willing to step up, he decided to put himself forward. He missed, Germany scored, and England were out.
It’s the first time a sporting event made me cry. It wasn’t the last; England were eliminated from the 1998 World Cup on penalties, and again at Euro 2004, World Cup 2006, and Euro 2012. Southgate’s role in the 1996 semi-final defeat highlights England’s poor approach to penalties—no clear preparation or thought as to who the best players would be, limited practice, and focused on a sense of duty. Losing on penalties became known as the English disease; players and managers would point to how they were unlucky, or that you couldn’t replicate the stress and pressure of a penalty shootout in training, so why bother?
The turnaround
Fast forward to 2016 and Southgate was appointed manager of England men’s team. Along with technical director Dan Ashworth, the two spearheaded efforts to make England good at penalties. Their performance analysis team conducted an in-depth study into shootouts, understanding what goes into a successful penalty, what information goalkeepers need to improve their chances of making a save, and what the coaching staff should do around the event itself to support the players. In the 2018 World Cup, England, led by Southgate, won their first shootout in 22 years, and only their second ever, defeating Colombia. This wasn’t a fluke; England’s age group sides had also started to win shootouts at Under-17 and Under-20 level.
Southgate’s redemption arc highlights a key truth that other nations had known for a long time; you can (and should!) prepare for penalties. One aspect of preparation is around the actual strategy used by the penalty taker; research suggests players are either keeper-independent (their shot position is not dependent on what the keeper does) or keeper-dependent. Both appear to be equally effective, although more recent research suggests that keeper dependent strategies are becoming both more common and more successful. Similarly, research has highlighted where a shot should be aimed to increase the chances of success.
Key factors in penalty success
As a result, there is a clear technical and tactical model for successful penalty kicks, which can be refined and practiced over time. However, what we know from research is that the chances of scoring a penalty is inversely related to the importance of the penalty; that is, players are more likely to miss high-pressure penalties. As a result, at the elite level, skill and fatigue are not key determinants of shootout success or failure; psychological factors are. This is contagious; players on teams (like England) who have lost a preceding penalty shootout are more likely to rush their penalty than players from previously successful teams, even if they didn’t play in the preceding match. Players who take less than one second to place the ball on the penalty spot score less than 60% of their penalties; those that take longer score just over 80%. The theory here is that players who place the ball quicker are exhibiting escapist behaviours—they want to get the process over and done with.
This is perhaps best encapsulated in a quote by researchers Greg Wood, Geir Jordet, and Mark Wilson, who write:
“If players hit optimal areas of the goal their chances of success increase dramatically and in order to shoot with such accuracy they need to aim effectively. Anxiety has a negative impact on the aiming behaviour of the player creating an attentional bias towards looking at the goalkeeper. There, there may be utility in training players to optimise their aiming behaviour to perform well under pressure.”
In essence, it is pressure, and the players response to it, that causes failure in penalty shootouts. And, fortunately, the response to pressure can be trained and adapted.
Preparing for pressure
How can this be done? Wood, Jordet, and Wilson suggest the following:
- Education – ensure players understand that luck plays minimal role in penalties; preparation is far more important.
- Normalize emotional disturbance – highlight the types of emotions players may experience, and outline how these are normal and expected, and even planned for.
- Reduce ego threat – communicate that mistakes under pressure will happen, and are normal.
- Optimise self-regulation – support players in developing the skills required to performance with pressure.
- Design realistic training scenarios – for example, replicate the long walk from the halfway line.
In terms of practice design, coaches can utilise something called pressure training. Research has shown that training when feeling anxious supports competition performance during high pressure situations (that cause anxiety) – as a result, training that provides some level of anxiety appears important, which is where pressure training comes in. I was fortunate to be an author on the recent Exercise and Sport Science Australian (ESSA) position statement on performance under pressure in sport, which you can read in full here. In essence, pressure training is the manipulation of the practice environment with the intent to create a stress response, which, in turn, allows athletes to develop and practice coping strategies to support their performance in high pressure situation. To do this, we have three main strategies:
- Extending the reach of consequences;
- Simulating the psychological demands of competition; and
- Approximating (but not replicating) intensity of competition pressure.
In preparing for a penalty shootout, a coach could therefore utilise the following strategies to create pressure:
- Have players wait in the centre circle prior to walking forwards to take the kick, and having to wait for the referees whistle.
- Introducing consequences for the losing team.
This research-backed approach appears to be successful in supporting performers to compete better during high pressure situations.
Lessons for other sports
Of course, the penalty shootout isn’t the only thing in sport subject to pressure – in almost all sports, at the highest level, athletes will experience pressure. Like Gareth Southgate, I once found myself responsible for a high-profile failure; running 4th leg in the 4x100m relay at the 2008 Olympics, I left early and the team was subsequently disqualified.
Now, in my own relay coaching, I use pressure training to better prepare athletes to perform on the biggest stage, and not make the same mistake I did. I do this through a variety of methods. We utilise games, where athletes get points for technical mistakes (the greater the mistake, the more points), with athletes with the greatest points required to undertake a (mild!) consequence. We simulate the demands of competition through simulated call rooms and simulated rain delays, and we ramp the pressure further by utilising competitive reps, something with up to four teams at once. All of this is designed to make the athletes confident that they can deliver the required skill under pressure—which, as a general rule, they do.
Coaches from all sports can adapt their methods to include these techniques, which, much like England and penalties, can ensure the success of their athletes when it matters the most.
