Amr Obaid (Cairo)
It has become no secret in recent years that goalkeepers use technical and digital statistics of their opponents to save penalty kicks and penalties. What England goalkeeper Jordan Pickford did by saving the first penalty kick during the Three Lions’ match against Switzerland in the quarter-finals of Euro 2024 was not the first incident by the Everton goalkeeper, as this scene was repeated 3 times during his career in previous years, whether with the national team or the club. Rather, the “magic bottle” appeared clearly and caught the eye with 3 other goalkeepers, and every time it stole the spotlight, the ending did not come happily after that. Will Pickford escape the “curse of the bottle” this time?
The bottle trick has become associated with the Englishman Pickford more than anyone else, because it has appeared in three different scenes in recent years. The first was in the 2018 World Cup, when he saved Carlos Bacca’s decisive penalty kick in the round of 16 match against Colombia, which gave the Three Lions a ticket to the quarter-finals. Pickford tried to hide the matter, but the cameras captured a picture of the bottle, which forced him to talk about it later.
Pickford’s bottle reappeared in the Euro 2020 final, helping him save two Italian penalty kicks, one from Andrea Belotti and the other from Jorginho, but the poor condition of England’s stars wasted Pickford’s effort after he missed three kicks at the time. Penalty data appeared on Pickford’s bottles in the Premier League, but the most famous was in the 2022/2023 season when he prevented his compatriot Maddison from scoring a penalty kick for Leicester City, at the end of the first half of his team, Everton, against the “Foxes”, which gave the “Toffees” the opportunity to come back from 1-2 behind to draw 2-2.
It is true that all teams use different methods to teach goalkeepers how to execute penalty kicks and penalty shootouts against their opponents, but simply revealing the maximum benefit that Pickford reaps from his “magic bottle” may warn competitors in the remaining matches of “Euro 2024”, and perhaps he will be afflicted with the “curse” that struck 3 other goalkeepers in previous years, who clearly revealed the effect of those “bottles” after their success in one of the matches, and after that the ending was not “happy”.
Perhaps the most famous case in Arab sports is the Egyptian goalkeeper, Mohamed Abou Gabal, who excelled in stopping penalty kicks during the 2021 Africa Cup of Nations, especially against Cameroon in the semi-finals of the “CAN” by stopping two penalty kicks. After that, the “Pharaohs’ Bottle” appeared and was talked about in the media, to the point that the Egyptian goalkeeping coach, Essam El-Hadary, drew a lot of attention to it. Despite Abou Gabal’s success in stopping the shot of Senegalese Sadio Mane during regular time of the final match, and stopping one penalty kick in the end, the “Teranga Lions” noticed the matter and changed the places where they were shooting their balls, so that Senegal was crowned and the Egyptian team lost the title in the same way, through penalty kicks!
In 2020, Norwich goalkeeper Tim Krul was a hero on the night of the FA Cup fifth round against Tottenham, after he also saved two penalty kicks to give his team a ticket to the quarter-finals and eliminate the “Roosters”, but it was noticed that he took a few moments to get a sip of water from his bottle before each kick, and the matter was actually exposed and the data appeared on Krul’s bottle, who did not enjoy this great success after Norwich’s next loss to Manchester United with a fatal goal just two minutes before resorting to penalty kicks.
In England, too, a similar bottle appeared in 2022 in a more impressive way, when the Nottingham Forest goalkeeper saved 3 penalty kicks during the second leg of the semi-finals of the play-offs to advance to the Premier League. At the time, the Frenchman of Congolese origin, Brice Samba, stopped Sheffield United’s kicks, pushing Forest towards the final. Despite his participation in the final match against Huddersfield Town, which led his team to promotion, he suffered a very serious injury at the end of the match and was substituted. What is even stranger is that despite his major role in Forest’s promotion to the Premier League after 23 years, he left immediately after this season to Lens in France!
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