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The Penalty Kick by Robert McCrum review — how football changed
By: Ernie Date: November 11, 2024, 4:19 pm
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Review of a new book from last Sunday's Sunday Times Culture
section.
The story of the penalty kick, from its invention by a Northern
Irish linen manufacturer to its role in football history
Why didn’t you just whack it in?” Barbara Southgate asked. Her
son, Gareth, had missed the decisive penalty in England’s Euro
1996 semi-final defeat to Germany at Wembley Stadium. Southgate
became a national punchline. He appeared in a Pizza Hut advert
with a paper bag over his head.
Redemption took a while, coming 22 years later in Moscow. A
waistcoat-clad Southgate, now the England manager, roared and
pumped his fists on the touchline as his team beat Colombia and
ended a long road of English penalty shoot-out failure, which
ran through Turin, Wembley, St Etienne, Lisbon, Gelsenkirchen
and Kyiv. Mentioning England and penalties in the same sentence
could once have been the start of a comedy routine; now it would
be a sign that the speaker’s football references are out of
date.
The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Gamechanger tells the history
of the penalty alongside the family history of the author,
Robert McCrum. His great-grandfather was the linen manufacturer
William McCrum from Co Armagh. In 1890, when football was far
more physical than it is now, he wanted to stop defenders
hacking down attacking players to prevent them scoring. His
Presbyterian roots informed the idea of the penalty. “Its name
implied justice, even retribution,” his great-grandson says. The
footballing authorities formally adopted his idea in 1891 as Law
13 despite some sniffiness at “the Irishman’s motion”.
Robert McCrum is a former literary editor of The Observer and
sees his ancestor’s invention through the prism of high art.
“The penalty kick rule was the game’s first step towards a
tighter dramatic structure,” he says of a sport that has its
roots in a semi-organised brawl. The penalty is a contest where
the dice are loaded, he observes. It is easier for an attacker
to score one than a goalkeeper to prevent one, piling pressure
on the attacker. Therein lies the drama. “Its inspiration was
the first thing Master Willie had grown up with: his family’s
Presbyterian belief in fairness, but fashioned in a peculiarly
Irish way with uneven odds.”
The story of William McCrum and his family takes place in an
Ulster of boggy pitches and dreary steeples. It is a tragic one
interspersed by war, his mother’s death at 29 and his wife’s
affair being published in the newspapers — a humiliation he
would never recover from.
The family history collides with historical events ranging from
the familiar, like the sinking of the Titanic, to the less so,
like the 1931 Invergordon mutiny. William McCrum’s son Cecil,
the author’s grandfather, was a high-ranking naval officer at
the time, but his career ended up in ignominy because he was
there when a thousand sailors refused to take orders in a
dispute over pay and conditions off the Scottish coast. Cecil
McCrum had lots of time to reflect. “Like any failed penalty
taker, a Gareth Southgate or a Chris Waddle, he would spend his
career brooding on it in disgrace.”
Waddle missed in 1990 when England lost the World Cup semi-final
to Germany — he later admitted he had barely taken a penalty in
his long career, let alone prepared for the shoot-out. McCrum
blames “an aggressive kind of Anglo amateurism” for this
perpetual lack of preparation compared with successful nations
such as Germany. This changed with Southgate, a man as
comfortable in the jargon of sports psychology as the profanity
of the dressing room. Southgate’s narrative arc is a neat one:
failure, redemption, then ultimate failure, but with a dash of
personal growth to ease the pain.
Gary Lineker was one of those who scored in Turin before
watching on as Waddle and Stuart Pearce missed. Nine years
later, working as a broadcaster, he visited the grave of William
McCrum. “This man has a lot to answer for,” he said to the
camera in the Armagh graveyard. Here, the great-grandson defends
the dead man’s honour: “Had he known the truth of Master
Willie’s humiliation as a husband, father and failed
businessman, Lineker might have been less flippant.”
McCrum links the psychology of the penalty to the history of
Northern Ireland, “a society whose vicissitudes continue to
flourish on the margin of failure, regret and historic
disappointment”. While shoot-outs can still produce these
emotions in the taker, to the spectator they are the pinnacle of
glitzy sporting drama.
Two years ago in Qatar Lionel Messi cemented his status as the
greatest footballer of the modern age by winning the World Cup
with Argentina. But that final was decided not by a moment of
magic from Messi; it ended in a shoot-out best remembered for
the savviness (or gamesmanship) of the Argentine goalkeeper
Emiliano Martinez. It was the most watched sporting event in
human history, and will remain so until the next World Cup final
comes around in New York City in 2026. Will England’s hopes end,
once again, in penalty misery? We will all be watching — perhaps
not despite but because it can all be so agonising, McCrum
concludes. “Perhaps it’s reassuring to see that your heroes are
not merely mortal but subject to human frailty.”
The Penalty Kick: The Story of a Gamechanger by Robert McCrum
(Notting Hill Editions £15.99 pp168). To order a copy go to
timesbookshop.co.uk. Free UK standard P&P on orders over £25.
Special discount available for Times+ members
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