If penalties are a 50/50 toss up you'd wonder why England seems to always lose it... Toss a coin and you got a 50% chance of head and tails but do it ten times and whats the chances you will always get tails?
It's a bit of luck yes but put it like this if you took a penalty against any keeper from the worldcup I doubt you would score. Similarly if it was me in the goal and England taking the penalties I imagine they would score practically every penalty they hit on target (and probably a few off target ones I accidentally knocked in). This leads me to believe penalties actually involve some skill including the skill of keeping your nerve.
Considering teams have dedicated penalty shooters it would seem they concur that penalties are in fact a matter of skill and not just 'pot luck'. There is no denying there is an aspect of luck but then there is an aspect of luck in the referreees decisions, in the way the ball bounces, in the freak injuries players sometimes pick up etc. etc... so in suofftopicry I think its silly to complain about an aspect of the game and call it unfair just because the team you like is crap at it, if England won everytime penalties came up I imagine English supporters would be taking a different tune towards Penalty kicks.
I'm an Rep of Ireland supporter first and foremost (controversial I know), so I'm not just saying this because England have a shocking record. Penalties are unfair, it tells you nothing about the teams, Portugal were getting their backsides well and truly spanked for 120 minutes, they had a man advantage for 58 of those but they still won the game. Penalties are unfair, in my opinion the teams should play to a conclusion, that would at the very least test their resolve and their footballing ability, I hate penalties, they are a cruel part of the game and no real football fan wants to see a game decided by them.
I think it's encouragement. You know PK's are coming so you want to step up and not leave the game to one slip of the goalie. Besides, everyone is physically dead after even 90 minutes of good soccer. Playing a game past 120 would just be torture.
The best team loses all the time. They might aswell do in with goals altogether and just have a judgeing panel. Obviously sometimes there is injustice, but that is inherent in the game. The tragedy of having something snatched so cruelly away from you is probably why so much people love it. Plus doing away with penalties would be silly. They are probably the most tense thing in sport.
Truth is that penalty shootout should be abolished. Very sad that a country has to wait for more years (England and Argentina especially) to be up there and prove they are the best. And four years is a very long wait. Maybe you won't be selected again and you'd have to carry that burden (as a pro-athlete and representative of your country in the world's most important sporting celebration) the rest of your life. What if we got through that penalty shootout? That's what Crespo (Argentina) and Hargreaves (England) wouldbe thinking right now!
Penalties do require footballing skill. It also requires serious mental strength. Though it's a hoprrible way to go out, there is no way that a penalty shootout is as random as a toin coss.
For one, a toin is cossed only once, but a penalty shootout has usually got about 10 of them. That helps reduce "randomness" from entering into the equation, so you can't feasibly argue that penalties are random. Maybe a single penalty is, but on the whole, they are not.
Penalties are always unfair, I'd prefer they toss a coin to decide the winner, its about as random.
---
Thinking about it, for a penalty taker, there are 5 distinct positions you can put the ball. Tewo bottom corners, two top corners and down the middle. I'm not counting the two heights of down the middle, because essentially if the keeper chooses not to move, he's probably going to save it at either height down the middle.
On the otherhand, a toin coss has only two possible outcomes.
Unfortunately, splitting a goal area into discrete sections isn't entirely realistic because it just doesn't work like that. But regardless, a keeper going top left will most likely not save a ball that goes bottom left, unless he catches it with his foot or something. It's silly to say that penalties (as in the penalty shoot-out system) are random, they're not. There are far too many deterministic factors at play for the idea of randomness to hold water. eg skill, technique, mental strength
Tossing a coin is not like that at all.
I'm curious what match you were watching... Though Portugal weren't dominating England the converse is equqally untrue. Portugal kept the ball around Englands area for ridiculous amounts of time everytime they made an attack and the one time they actually hit an early cross they scored a goal and had it disallowed, some of Englands counter attacks were quite good but overall I really fail to see how Portugal were getting 'spanked' for 120 mins.
England played with one player less and without Rooney and Beckham (and without Owen - RoboBoy is NOT a good choice). And still they couldnt get the ball in. The strange thing was that even with the clear disadvantages of England Portugal allowed them to counter and to put them under pressure at times.
England fought well and Portugal just showed how lazy they have become in this world cup.
Well... I don't think Portugal are lazy. Did you just see their match against Germany? It's just that they couldn't finish in the England match but they certainly did demonstrate that they have quality passers... lol. Anyway England fought hard and fair play to them they had their moments but for most of the match they were on the backfoot so I dont really see how that can equate to 'spanking Portugal for 120 minutes'.