How To Take A Football Penalty

Hi, my name's Matt Dilworth. I'm a Saturday Intermediate League goalkeeper, and I also run and manage my own Sunday league side. And today, I'm going to take you through some football basics to help get you started.

Okay, this is how to take a penalty in football. This is going to be your team's golden opportunity to get themselves a goal here, just you versus the keeper from twelve yards. The odds are in your favor, you're expected to score, so it's a very pressurized moment of the game, so it's important that from the moment that the referee has given the penalty, you know you're taking it, don't change your mind.

Know exactly where you want to kick the ball, where you want it to go and stick with it. If you change your mind and there's an element of doubt, you may not connect properly with the football and it could end up going anywhere. It's also imperative to hit the target.

Make the goalkeeper work. If he's going to save it, make sure you've given him some, some work to do. And if you do hit the target, and he does choose correctly and goes that way, there's always a chance he won't be able to keep it out and he'll only be able to palm it into the side net or something like that.

So here, I'm going to try to strike the ball, in this instance, very hard. You'll see different types of penalty takers, whoever it be, to smash it just as hard as they can, to side foot it into the corner, or way hesitate and wait for the goalkeeper to commit himself, but in this instance, I'm just going to try and hit it as hard as I can and I'm going to try to hit it to the goalkeeper's left as we look. Okay, in this instance, I'm going to pick my spot, the bottom right hand corner as you look, and I'm just going to side foot it, and try and be as precise as I can and tuck it in that corner.

And for the very confident penalty taker, you can hesitate and stagger your run, you try and make the goalkeeper make his decision before you've made yours and if he commits himself, you've then left yourself one side of the goal to stroke the ball home with little power. Some would say it's a bit of a cheeky penalty, but obviously you've got to be supremely confident because if it all goes wrong, you're going to look a bit of a fool. You must be careful though, because there is a new law change that if you come to a complete standstill, you're now not allowed to do that, so if you can stagger but you're not allowed to come to a complete stop before you strike the ball. .