“We won one penalty shootout in my time. I recognise now we felt penalties was 50/50,” Neville said. “It isn’t. You have to have really good technical players on the pitch.
“Someone told me the other week what Gareth does. He takes three players to a very quiet area of the training ground. They take three penalties each in a real methodical way. Quite short but concentrated and focused. Basically, they are told to pick a place where they are going to take the penalty and they go in.”
Neville detailed some of the previous attempts. “We had penalty competitions, leading up to the tournament, which meant whoever won the penalty competition were the best five penalty takers. That was Sven in 2006 in Germany. That’s how [Jamie] Carragher ended up on the pitch, coming on for two or three minutes, as he actually won the penalty competition.”
Instead of using a casual competition as grounds for qualification to take penalties in a major tournament quarter-final, Southgate’s England take a rather more regimented approach.
Chris Markham spent four years at the Football Association (FA) as game insights lead, and worked closely with England managers in making preparations for penalties more professional.
Markham told the Daily Mirror, external: “I think I found quotes from each of the last five England managers before Gareth Southgate, not including Sam Allardyce, that said either the penalty shootout was a lottery, penalties are all down to luck, or that you can’t practice that kind of pressure.
“Luckily for us, Gareth and his staff were extremely open-minded and respectful of good-quality work. But they don’t suffer fools gladly so we knew it had to be at a really high standard. Talking about run-up steps, angle, pace, you know everything from breathing techniques, optimal areas of aiming, goalkeepers, looking at goggles.
“I went into Gareth’s office, we basically printed out and cut into bits of paper all the different topics and Gareth then prioritised, literally on the floor and table, which ones he thought were important and which ones he thought were less of a priority.”
All that hard work has paid off, and now England have no fear of paying the penalty.