England look to finally bury penalty curse

By George Burns Jun 23, 2006, 16:08 GMT

Baden-Baden, Germany - England have a not so proud tradition in recent major football tournaments of playing well in the knockout round, giving their all on the pitch before tamely going out on penalties.

Chris Waddle, David Batty, Gareth Southgate and even current captain David Beckham are just some of the names that have entered England's spot kick hall of infamy in recent years and the current crop are sick and tired of the sour taste defeat in the dreaded penalty shootout leaves behind.

Be it against Germany at Italia 1990 and Euro 1996, Argentina at the 1998 World Cup or Portugal in Euro 2004, England have always come up short. Only against Spain a decade ago on home soil have they managed to come out victorious.

With such a poor record, it's little wonder that coach Sven Goran Eriksson has his players practising spot kicks every day at training ahead of Sunday's round of 16 tie against Ecuador in Stuttgart.

'We practise every day,' said striker Peter Crouch ahead of the match in Stuttgart. 'People do say it's a lottery but if you practise as much as you can it's definitely beneficial and I can assure we have definitely been practising.'

Although Crouch missed a penalty in the World Cup warm-up victory against Jamaica, the Liverpool striker said he was still confident enough to stand up and be counted against the South Americans if it should come to it.

'I let myself down at Old Trafford (against Jamaica). I got carried away,' he said. 'I'll obviously be putting myself forward whether the manager wants me to or not.'

Eriksson admitted that his team were preparing for every eventuality against Ecuador.

'You have to prepare all 11 players for it,' he said. 'We have practised it a lot and we are going to do it again. I hope we will do better than in the last tournament of course.'

Eriksson was referring to the quarter-final loss to Portugal at Euro 2004 when Beckham famously slipped and sent the ball high over the bar.

Since Beckham's miss, Frank Lampard has taken over England's penalty taking duties although the Real Madrid midfielder would be one of the first five to take one in a penalty shootout alongside Steven Gerrard, John Terry and Ashley Cole.

But just in case practise doesn't make perfect, scientists at the John Moores University in Liverpool have sent Eriksson what they believe to be the scientific formula for taking the perfect penalty: (((X + Y + S) / 2) x ((T + I + 2B) / 4)) + (V/2) -1.