Review
Culture
Football
Sport
5 min read

Shootout: what penalties say about life

Football is a global language and the shootout is the end to Shakespearian tragedy.

Simon is Bishop of Tonbridge in the Diocese of Rochester. He writes regularly round social, cultural and political issues.

A footballer takes a penalty kick.
England v Columbia: 2018 World Cup shootout.

It is hard to pity entitled, overpaid footballers.  Until, that is, it comes down to penalties after extra time.  Even when you do not care who wins, the drama of the penalty shootout is so intense and all-consuming that every heart rate quickens. 

Is there a more exquisite form of sporting torture? 

Sport is laden with cliché, and the refrain, ‘it’s come down to the lottery of penalties’ is an established part of the lexicon.  But is it just the spin of the roulette?  That you can’t prepare effectively for the cauldron of the stadium?  

Not according to Geir Jordet, it isn’t.  The Norwegian Professor of Psychology and Football is on a mission to convince the world there is lots you can do to get ready and those that don’t are more likely to fail. 

There is skill involved in taking a penalty, an ability that can be honed with practice.  Individual players can be trained to take their time (but not too long), to establish a routine that helps them take control of the situation, to take careful breaths, and to focus.  They can be helped with blocking out the trash talk of opponents, especially goalkeepers, who subtly try to get under their skin in the seconds leading up to a penalty.  Extensive research can be carried out by data-rich backroom staff to help with preparation.  And behind all this is the recognition that taking a penalty is a team effort, not an individual one.   

This latter observation feels especially counter intuitive.  There is nothing more lonely than the appearance of one man or woman taking the long walk from the centre circle to the penalty spot.  But teams can support one another with words of encouragement and touch.  Not just in the grasping of each other’s shoulders in the centre circle, but in reaching out to those who both score and miss.  One reason Geir Jordet advises that the manager should choose penalty takers rather than look for volunteers is that they then can take full responsibility for the outcome.  It is hard to believe there are still times when a manager looks around at players after extra time, hoping to see in the eyes who is up to the task.  These duties should be sorted out in advance, with back-up plans for when players are injured or substituted.

Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort.

Jordet, in his stimulating book Pressure: Lessons From The Psychology Of The Penalty Shoot Out says that anxiety is normal and should be embraced.  Greater openness round mental wellbeing is allowing the modern professional to admit this.  Erling Haarland, one of the world’s most accomplished goal scorers, has shared the fear he regularly feels round taking a penalty; it is hard to imagine a player from the 1970s saying the same. 

Missing a penalty in the shootout is inevitable; the only way it can conclude.  And statistics show that the world’s greatest players, like Lionel Messi, are not notably better at converting penalties than others.  On average, the best players have around an eighty percent success rate (which, significantly, is one missed penalty out of five in a shootout).  As in other professions, the best results are achieved by creating systems and cultures that can adapt quickly and honestly to errors and learn from them without humiliating those who fail. 

Reading the book cast my mind back to the archetypal shootout between David and Goliath.  Deciding war between opposing tribes based on an individual contest was quite common in the ancient world – effectively moving to the penalty shootout before the game, to save the effort.  Perhaps David should have lost it, and not just because of his size.  Beforehand, he had a serious bust up with his side and those who did not see him as a team player.  Then Goliath trash talked him like Emi Martinez is famed for with Aston Villa and Argentina.  And finally, he ran up to take his shot very quickly, without much reflection.  But then again, Geir Jordet would be the first to point out that preparing badly for a contest does not mean you can’t win it – just that you are less likely to. 

Football is a global language and the penalty shootout is like the cataclysmic end to a Shakespearian tragedy.  English fans are long suffering audiences of this trauma – from Italia 90 to Wembley 2021, via the 1996 Euros when football was coming home until a last minute wrong turning.  But many other nations have under-achieved at penalties, like Holland and Spain and, more recently, France.  Roberto Baggio of Italy missed the decisive penalty in the first World Cup Final to go to penalties in 1994.  He says of it:  

‘I failed that time.  Period.  And it affected me for years.  It was the worst moment of my career.  I still dream about it.’.   

The personal stakes are as high, if not higher, than the nation’s.   

We are left with the feeling that hugely divergent outcomes can emerge from the smallest and most random of causes.  The human tendency is then to rationalise the outcome in ways that make it seem inevitable.  Geir Jordet is aware of this in football, but in other walks of life, we continue to build up wobbly cases on shallow evidence as a way of warding off anxiety or the fear that others will think we are clueless if we admit to the existence of chance.  Most people are right less than eighty percent of the time; something we might hold in mind when the next England players make that solitary walk to the penalty spot.  

Article
Care
Culture
Mental Health
3 min read

Separating mind and body still stigmatises mental health

Our minds and bodies are meant to be inseparable.

Rachael is an author and theology of mental health specialist. 

 

 

Two bird sit on wires facing in opposite directions.
Eduardo Soares on Unsplash.

I recently had a somewhat surreal experience whilst trying to get two consultants to agree to some treatment I needed to have.  

One was a cardiologist, the other a psychiatrist - both consultants, working in the same geographical area - and I found, to my surprise, that there was no recourse for my physical health records to be viewed by the psychiatrist and vice versa.  

And as I went through the process of trying to mediate between these two professionals, it made me reflect that whilst in theory there is agreement that our minds and our bodies are one and that they cannot be treated wholly separately, the reality is something rather different.  

Mental and physical health problems are, in fact, treated as entirely separate entities, with different trusts and funding models in place to deliver care and treatment for mental illness and physical illness.  

Now, there is probably a bureaucratic reason for this, but I believe it uncovers a perhaps unconscious belief that our minds and bodies are distant relatives at best, and not only that, but our mental health is still the poorer relation - best ignored unless it’s particularly bothersome.  

I think this separation sits at the heart of the stigma that mental health problems still face - a stigma that persists even in the mental health system. It has ancient roots. Go back to ancient Greece and its philosophers. They held to a  doctrine where the body and soul were completely separate - our bodies are simply houses for our souls. In a way, the stigma that exists about mental health is the inverse of this- that our minds are less important than our physical bodies and that caring for mental health always comes second to caring for physical health. 

Yet, also in those ancient times, the Bible's treatment of humanity shows that we are creations of mind, body, and soul—all equal, beloved, and cared for by God. In Mark’s gospel, we read that the command to love God and one another is multi-faceted: “Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ The second is this: ‘Love your neighbour as yourself.’ There is no commandment greater than these.” To love one another, then, means we need to care for one another’s mental health as well as physical health and strength, as we love with our minds and bodies. 

In truth, we cannot care well for ourselves or one another without considering both our mental and physical health. To ignore the mental strain of physical illnesses like cancer, and ignore the physical pains that mental illnesses cause, such as their effects on digestion and blood pressure, is to ignore significant parts of people's suffering.  

In the Old Testament of the Bible there is the story of Elijah, one of the great prophets who flees from a murderous ruler and, whilst spiritually and physically exhausted, begs God for death. “I have had enough, LORD,” he said. “Take my life; I am no better than my ancestors.” 

These are words of desperation that echo those who struggle with their mental health, and God’s reply to Elijah’s pain is to meet him with an encounter with an angel who urges him to sleep and eat, comforting him with the words “the journey is too much for you”. There is no reprimand for Elijah’s suffering, simply comfort for a tortured mind and provision for an exhausted body. 

The answer, then, is to treat ourselves and others as the embodied creations we are, with mind and body inseparable and interconnected in ways that even science cannot quite explain or articulate.  

The answer is to trust in the embodied hope of Christ, who chose to save us through not only his bodily crucifixion and resurrection, but through experiencing the breadth and depth of human emotions so that we may never again feel alone in them. 

Both our bodies and our minds matter to God, and we need to see that reflected in society, where we care not just for single ailments, but the whole person. We need not just an awareness of our minds, but an understanding of what it means to be mentally healthy, as well as a recognition of the horrors of mental illness. Only then, I believe, can we see a society which cares and serves those most in need not simply as isolated symptoms, but as valuable creations.