It’s theatrical. It can be frustrating. It makes the world’s top soccer players look either very cool or very stupid.
Stutter step penalty is a feature of this feature world cupThe main players using this technique are superstars Lionel Messi, Kylian Mbappe, Cristiano Ronaldo, Harry Kane, and Neymar.
Let’s say there were varying levels of success.
it has passed through France to the quarterfinals, and This contributed to Brazil’s withdrawal. Messi took a shot in the group play, but he couldn’t even make a shot.
As for Neymar, the converted stutter step penalty is A farewell gift to international football.
And it hurts.
Popularized by Pele and continued by Neymar
The stutter-step penalty, in which a player makes a feint, sometimes repeatedly, almost to a stop, while keeping an eye on the goalkeeper while running up to the ball, is widely believed to have originated in Brazil in the late 1950s and early 1960s.
It became famous with the nickname “Paradinha”, which means “small stop” in Portuguese. Pele Then the young Neymar, who had been hailed as the successor to the three-time World Cup winner, became his successor.
Neymar, 18 years old, 2010 Increased stuttering to the maximum level When he scored a penalty against his club team Santos, he danced towards the ball, stood still with his standing foot next to the ball, and stroked the ball home after already diving the goalkeeper.
Ahead of the World Cup in South Africa that year, soccer law makers were forced to change the rules, directing referees to show yellow cards and disallow goals for penalty takers who feinted to kick the ball.
Since then, the law has been refined again, allowing players to feint during the run-up, but not before completing the feint before taking a shot.
Experts say stutter step technique is ‘sophisticated’ but dangerous
The main idea of the stutter step penalty is to confuse the goalkeeper very much in this regard. battle of wills They take shots from beyond 12 yards (11 meters) early on, giving them an easy path to get shots on net.
This “goalkeeper-dependent technique” (as experts call it) is not for the faint of heart.
“It’s very sophisticated and it’s hard to perform when you’re really under pressure,” explains Geir Jorde, a professor at the Norwegian School of Sport Science and author of Pressure: Lessons from the Psychology of Penalty Shootouts. “The ability to perform this technique will effectively remove the risk factor of keeping the goalie on the right track and suddenly reducing the odds.”
But Jorde added: “You have to be very clear-headed to be able to do that.”
Everyone seems to be doing stuttering steps.
When it comes to penalties, there will always be traditionalists who will bow their heads and give it a hard whack. There was also a brief period of hop-skip routines, used with some success six or seven years ago, particularly by Portugal midfielder Bruno Fernandes and former Italy international Jorginho.
These days, most penalty takers have the stutter step technique in their arsenal, even if they don’t use it all the time.
Messi used it for a spot kick in the group stage match against Austria, but missed. When receiving a penalty in Wednesday’s round-of-16 match against Egypt, he made his usual run-up, changed course and this time saved the kick.
In England’s win over Croatia in the group stage, Kane saved a penalty after a stutter-step run-up, but the referee ordered the spot-kick to be retaken because the goalkeeper left his line too early. Kane ran straight towards the ball and scored his second try.
Successful kicks using this technique saw Mbappé give France a 1-0 victory over Paraguay in the round of 16, Portugal’s Ronaldo gave Portugal a 2-1 win over Croatia in the same round, and Neymar, now 34, rolled back the years to score from a last-minute goal against Norway. He retired from international play after the match.
Perhaps the best at it is Mexican striker Raul Jimenez. He stuttered several times en route to converting a penalty in Sunday’s 3-2 loss to England. He is statistically the best penalty taker in Premier League history, scoring with all 14 of his kicks.
Goalies are getting smarter about stutter-step attempts.
If they fail, the person penalizing the stutter step may look too careless and therefore unprofessional.
Goalies are also getting smarter with their goalies, Jorde said, changing their technique and becoming “creative, deliberate and erratic” by not committing early and trying to put more pressure on shooters.
As a result, high-profile stutter step failures are on the rise, especially when the pressure is at its highest. Watch Brazilian midfielder Bruno Guimarães play. That effort was saved when the score was 0-0, and Norway subsequently won 2-1 in the round of 16. And let’s take a look at Justin Kluivert’s performance when the Netherlands lost on penalties to Morocco.
Kluivert came on in the second half of extra time and was expected by the Dutch national team to be a penalty shootout specialist, but his kick hit the post.
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