A penalty shoot out was a fitting finale to the Champions League final on Wednesday night. A titanic battle between the two best club teams in the world could be settled only by recourse to one of the most cruel and yet most thrilling sporting spectacles. When sporting juggernauts of the calibre of Manchester United and Chelsea meet, spot kicks are the only way to establish which team has the heart, the conviction, the courage to call themselves champions.
Both Manchester United and Chelsea have maintained a consistency of performance that has seen them challenge at the highest level time and time again. Dominating the top two positions of the Premiership for three years, the clubs have been almost untouchable domestically. And in Europe, the showdown in Moscow had always been on the cards so long as the teams avoided each other in the draw.
But it seems that the difference between the teams is incredibly slight. Over the course of the entire season, a mere two points separated the teams at the top of the Premiership table.
The stalemate on Wednesday was broken only because Chelsea were fielding a makeshift right back, Michael Essien, who could not compete with the aerial prowess of a free scoring Cristiano Ronaldo.
And the Chelsea goal came via an incredibly fortuitous deflection. With Edwin Van der Sar and Rio Ferdinand wrong footed by the diversion of the ball, Frank Lampard gratefully converted from close range.
When two incredibly talented teams face one another, the fractions are all important. As Al Pacino’s Tony D’Amato has it: ” One half second too slow or too fast and you don’t quite catch it. The inches we need are everywhere around us. They are in every break of the game every minute, every second.”
Sometimes the only way to determine a champion is by a penalty shoot-out. The dramatic scenes on Wednesday mirrored those of the Community Shield at the start of the season. When United and Chelsea meet, particularly in cup competitions, a shootout seems to be the only way in which they can be separated. The ruthlessness of Avram Grant’s team seems to be the only obstacle to the more aesthetically appealing free flowing football of the Red Devils.
Time and time again spot kicks are the only way to separate the best teams. Italian and Brazilian teams at the height of their powers, led by the likes of Romario and Baggio, were forced to endure this sporting lottery in the 1994 World Cup. Liverpool’s magnificent comeback against AC Milan in the 2005 Champions League final was only a retort to an unstoppable display from the Italians in the first half. Over 90 minutes the teams were equal and even through extra time the teams could not be separated. Spot kicks determine the results of games in which exceptional teams are so closely matched.
Penalty shootouts capture what sport is all about. However much money Abramovich and the Glazers spend on their teams, they cannot buy the attributes needed to win this test of sporting nerve. Success from the spot is determined by a player’s resolve, his heart but it is also largely dependent on fortune.
Ronaldo may be the best player in the world but he could not convert from the spot when it mattered. And Terry is the most committed clubman in British football today, a man with Chelsea coursing through his veins, but the skipper could not score the penalty that would have seen them win the cup.
It was United goalkeeper Edwin Van der Sar who claimed the glory on the night. A talismanic figure in the United team, the Dutchman does not pick up the plaudits of the flair players in the team. But the save that he made from Nicholas Anelka’s penalty, like that of Dudek in 2005, will never be forgotten – a supreme piece of goalkeeping from a man at the top of his game. A save that shows that, in the penalty shootout, the goalkeeper gets his chance for greatness.
And the shootouts are amongst the most exciting spectacles in sport. For edge-of-the-seat, nail-biting drama the spot kicks have it all. A team’s season, a player’s career, supporter’s dreams realised or quashed in an instant.
Penalty shootouts are an incredible piece of sporting theatre that captures the drama of sport; an admittedly cruel way of deciding one of the most important matches a player can compete in. Terry’s tears stand testament to his disappointment upon missing a crucial penalty. But he had his chance, his stake at sporting greatness and he couldn’t take the pressure. The result was cruel but fair.
The drama in Moscow was heightened by its nerve-racking conclusion, the culmination of a tension filled encounter and an appropriate way to determine the champions of Europe. Penalty shootouts epitomise the drama of sport, a spectacle only dampened by England’s inability to perform from the spot.
