Athletes do so many extraordinary things in their sport that when you or I watch them perform, we can only dream of doing what they can do. After seeing this penalty kick, we can feel a bit better about ourselves.
This penalty kick fail happened in the Lithuanian Football Federation Cup. Gytis Siugzda of FK Silas wanted to fake out the goalkeeper by attempting a panenka penalty kick. If you don’t know what a panenka penalty is, imagine a knuckleball in baseball. The penalty kick taker runs and instead of firing a shot at the net, the shooter takes a lot of speed off the ball and shoot a slow rainbow shot down the middle in order to fake out the goalkeeper.
A panenka is something that if you are going to attempt, you better be sure you score because anytime someone shoots over the goal or worse, gets saved by an unfooled goalkeeper, looks really embarrassing. This attempt, however, may be way more embarrassing.
Clearly, this isn’t the Champions League Final so the skill level here isn’t on par with Cristiano Ronaldo. Regardless, don’t do the kick if you cannot do it any better than this. Sometimes, penalty kicks should just be standard kicks. Line up the kick, put it on target and if the goalkeeper saves it, they save it. But at least make the goalkeeper earn the save. A panenka, when not done right, can be an issue of the penalty kick taker overthinking the shot.
Silas would wind up losing by a goal. As if not converting a penalty kick was bad enough, it caused Silas to lose. Talk about having a bad day.
