Three months before the European Championship began, with France installed as pre-tournament favourites, a row broke out between two of the French Football Federation’s key strategists. The sporting director, Hubert Fournier, went public with his concern that Les Bleus, the senior national team, had an insufficiently rigorous planning process for penalty shoot-outs.
The long-serving head coach, Didier Deschamps, reacted angrily, cross that Fournier was intruding on his job, on territory Deschamps has guarded jealously for 12 years, a period that includes one triumphant World Cup, and silver medals in both the Euros and the last World Cup when France lost on penalties.
Deschamps argued there is only so much you can do to rehearse penalties, because the pressures on a player in a shoot-out, in a full stadium are never replicable on a practice ground.
But there are also certain things a coach might usually be reluctant to do if a tight knockout match in a major competition is edging towards a shoot-out to decide who goes through. Like take off his best penalty takers.
France versus Portugal in Hamburg at the weekend, a taut heavyweight clash for a place in the Euro 2024 semi-final was heading for a penalty tie-breaker when, halfway through extra time, scores locked at 0-0, Deschamps substituted Kylian Mbappe, his captain, chief match-winner and No 1 spot-kicker.
Mbappe, who has been playing since the opening game with a broken nose, was tired. But his withdrawal looked doubly ominous. Antoine Griezmann, France’s next-most expert spot-kicker, had also been substituted, in the second half.
So, come the final whistle, the game still goalless, when the list of France’s first five penalty takers was drawn up, Les Bleus' status as most likely winners of Euro 2024 suddenly looked under real challenge. They were facing the Portugal of Cristiano Ronaldo – 163 successful penalties in his career, excluding shoot-outs – in what stacked up as an extraordinary imbalance of knowhow in striking a dead ball from 12 yards.
France had not won a major tournament shoot-out since 1998. Portugal goalkeeper Diogo Costa had, in the previous round against Slovenia, made a Euros record three successive saves in the penalty tie-breaker. Bradley Barcola, 21, who won his fourth France cap as Mbappe’s replacement, had never taken a penalty in his senior career. He was earmarked to take France’s fourth against Costa.
Barcola took it impeccably, with a languid ease, apparently immune to the mounting pressure. And the pressure had ratcheted up. Joao Felix had put Portugal’s third spot kick against the French post. Barcola was suddenly burdened with being the young man to either squander advantage or make it really count.
France finished up scoring all their penalties, brilliantly in the cases of Jules Kounde and Theo Hernandez, defenders unused to this particular task. Poor Joao Felix ended up the only spot-kick failure as Portugal bowed out. Ronaldo, stern-faced, having converted their first penalty, was not among the compatriots instantly reaching out to Felix to commiserate.
The agonies for Felix, once the most expensive teenager to be transferred between clubs, will linger in his mind. He’s 24, his club career, lately a succession of loans from Atletico Madrid, is in limbo and he can only yearn for those days when he carried about him the confidence of a Barcola. Or of an Arda Guler, the 19-year-old who galvanised Turkey’s run to within 20 minutes of the semis, and set up the goal that gave the Turks a 1-0 lead ahead of a spirited Netherlands fightback on Saturday night.
Or of a Lamine Yamal, who turns 17 three days after the Spain for whom he is the leading assister this tournament meet France in the first of two semi-finals.
The Netherlands will meet England in Dortmund on Wednesday, a contest that puts on display far more obvious flaws in both sides than are apparent in the Spain-France duel that comes to Munich 24 hours earlier. England have laboured through two draws in the group phase, gone behind in both their knockout ties and needed extra time, against Slovakia, and penalties, against Switzerland, to reach the last four.
But England found clear-eyed, ice-cold young men to guide them through the pressure points: Jude Bellingham, 21, with a marvellous overhead volley to save the day against Slovakia and to convert the penalty that established England’s advantage against the Swiss; Cole Palmer, 21, who this time a year ago had just two Premier League starts to his name but, in Dusseldorf on Saturday, could be utterly relied on to convert England’s first penalty.
And, above all, Bukayo Saka, who at 22 is at his third major international tournament but came into his second shoot-out in a Euros confronted with haunting memories of his first. Saka was one of three Englishmen who had failed from the spot in the tie-breakers at the Euro 2020 final against Italy.
Abuse, some of it racist, would be directed at the then teenaged Arsenal player. England manager Gareth Southgate endured criticism for having asked very young players to take – and fail at – three of the penalties against Italy.
Saka, whose superb equaliser had already kept England in their quarter-final against Switzerland, was named man of the match. “I wasn’t focusing on the past,” he said. “But of course I know a lot of nervous people were watching, my family included. I kept my cool. You can fail once and you have a choice whether to put yourself in that position again or not. I’m a guy who’s going to put myself in that position.”
“So many stories,” reflected a relieved Southgate. “Cole taking the first [penalty] at his age. Bukayo. And Jude – we almost dismiss him because we already expect [so much] of him.”
And, far more than Deschamps would be inclined to with France, England have set about addressing the issues of penalty pressure methodically in recent years, meeting with academics and engaging with psychologists. After all, there is a long history of high-profile defeats on penalties in England’s poor overall record – no Euro triumphs, just one World Cup, way back in 1966 – at major tournaments.
But scratch hard enough and you can find points of frailty, ancient neuroses, in any national team. The Netherlands, who finished third in their group at these Euros, are sometimes accused of a lack of resolve, as their head coach Ronald Koeman has acknowledged.
Coming back from a goal down, dealing with what he called an “emotional match” against a noisily supported Turkey had shown “we have a big heart, sometimes we get criticised that we don’t have that compared with other nations”.
He was grateful, too, to the big hands of big-hearted Bart Verbruggen, the youngest of the first-choice goalkeepers among all the 24 teams who started these Euros, and responsible for a stunning late save to keep the quarter-final against Turkey from going into extra time.
Verbruggen is 21, and relishing his exposure on a stage that celebrates the young and is still waiting for a standout night from established stars like England’s Harry Kane, or France’s Mbappe and Griezmann, or the Netherlands’ Virgil van Dijk. None of them want to miss the train to next weekend’s Berlin final.