Defenders’ record from the spot not too far off the rest

When Lionel Messi missed a first-half penalty for Argentina against Austria he shrugged it off to score from open play, twice in fact, later in the match. Then he failed from the spot in the first half against Egypt but again bounced back by scoring an open-play goal. Kylian Mbappé followed suit in the quarter-finals for France, seeing his first-half penalty saved against Morocco but responding by scoring from general play after the break. Even Harry Kane has done something similar for England, seeing his initial penalty saved against Croatia before converting the retake and later adding a headed goal.

But while some of the world’s leading forwards have been combining mental toughness and strong displays with fallibility from 12 yards, it is defenders who, as a group, have been receiving flak over their penalty record this summer in North America.

Although none has taken a spot kick in regular time (ahead of last night’s games), ­seven out of 11 have fluffed their lines in shoot-outs. Given that four out of six defenders failed to convert in shoot-outs in the last World Cup in 2022, it has encouraged the view that ­penalties are not a job for those who play at the back.

This opinion appears to ­prevail in English football. Fulham’s left-back Antonee Robinson is the only defender among the 126 players to have taken a Premier League ­penalty over the past five seasons; his contribution, a conversion against Wolverhampton Wanderers late in the most recent campaign, is the only penalty given to a ­defender among the 484 awarded over that period. The previous case featured the Newcastle United centre-back Fabian Schär scoring against Fulham back in May 2021.

Yet defenders were not always considered incompatible with penalties. Four of the 10 players with the most English league goals from penalties spent most or all of their careers at the back.

Early this century, a majority of Graham Alexander’s record 65 ­spot-kicks were struck as Preston North End’s right-back; Ray Stewart, who favoured blasting his efforts from the spot, ­succeeded 57 times in the league for West Ham United from right-back in the 1980s; Jack Brownsword ­converted 49 times as Scunthorpe United’s long-time left back after their promotion to the league in 1950; and Stan Lynn, a right-back with Aston Villa in the 1950s and with Birmingham City in the following decade, hit 46 league penalties.

Many other defenders were famed for penalty taking. Two right-backs, Alf Ramsey and Phil Neal, converted multiple times from the spot for England, with the latter responsible for most of the penalties scored by Liverpool during his trophy-laden spell at Anfield from 1974 to 1985. Neal hit a penalty in the 1977 European Cup final win over Borussia Mönchengladbach while he and left-back Alan Kennedy succeeded with their kicks in the shoot-out victory over Roma in the 1984 final. Steve Bruce, a central defender, struck 13 penalty goals in the 1990-91 season, six of which helped Manchester United to the finals of the Cup Winners’ Cup and League Cup.

In any case, a look at shoot-outs in the 2014 and 2018 World Cup ­editions reveals 74% of defenders converted their kicks compared with only 68% by all other players. An analysis of shoot-outs across all World Cups and European Cups by Opta shows that the 69% success rate of ­defenders is not far off the 73% recorded by the rest. Defenders have scored from 110 of their 160 attempts, when a small increase to 117 conversions would have matched the rate of ­other players.

Never mind their troubles at this World Cup: those at the back can still be relied upon when stepping forward in a shoot-out.

Photograph by Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images