James: England will not pay penalty as homework is spot on

THE moment the World Cup moves into the knockout stage a Germanic mind focuses almost immediately on a ruthless and relentless push for victory; an Englishman’s thoughts, it is becoming increasingly clear, drift instead to penalties.

England’s last-16 match against Germany is still a day away but all the talk in the build-up to the fixture in Bloemfontein is not of what the final score may be or even whether Wayne Rooney can end his drought in front of goal.

No, all the talk is of an inevitable shoot-out and whether England can finally end a jinx which stretches back to 1990. That was the year that Bobby Robson’s team, Gazza and all, lost a World Cup semi-final on penalties to Germany having out-played them for long spells in a 1-1 draw.

Since then England have suffered the same fate, against the same opposition and at the same stage, in Euro ‘96 before going on to lose on penalties to Portugal in the quarter-finals of both Euro 2004 and Germany 2006.

Perhaps it is no wonder, then, that English fans have inadvertently upped the pressure on their own players by developing a macabre and destructive obsession with the penalty shoot-out.

In fact, if you look at the latest edition of the Oxford English Dictionary it wouldn’t be a surprise to find the word ‘penalties’ has been moved forward a few hundred pages; the correct and full expression in modern parlance I think you’ll find is the ‘dreaded penalties’.

Questions were being asked about England’s latest approach to the 12-yard shoot-out even before they left the country for a pre-tournament training camp in Austria so it was no surprise to see David James grow frustrated at the constant questioning he faced when speaking to the media in Rustenburg yesterday.

But his take on the situation was firstly that England would aim to win without the need for penalties and secondly that they have embraced modern technology in a bid to improve their chances if the ‘inevitable’ happens.

“If after 90 minutes and extra time we haven’t scored a winner the key issue is the homework,” James said.

“In Euro 2004 we played Portugal and we didn’t have access to as much information as we could have done with regard to potential penalty takers, but this time we will.

“In Portugal against France we didn’t have any evidence of Zidane taking a penalty for two years.

“So we go into the game and he scores a penalty that turns out to be the winner; whereas now by virtue of YouTube or soccer scouting databases, you can access a lot of the players.

“The FA have two full-time video technicians on site and access all the stuff. In the last three games we have had DVDs on just about every aspect of the opposition. So you do your homework, you work out what the guy is going to do and somewhere in the game you hope it happens.”

Just for a minute, there, James displayed almost Germanic signs of inner confidence and self-belief but whether that also applies to the men who take the spot-kicks remains to be seen.

England have studiously noted every penalty taken by their players both in training and in matches to draw up a ‘best penalty takers’ list from one to 23 and the plan in this tournament is to rely on statistics rather than gut instinct.

It will mean an end to the previously-favoured system of ‘hands up who fancies one’, which inevitably ended with big characters feeling they had to volunteer.

Don’t expect to see John Terry, however brave and bold he may be, taking one of the first five in a World Cup shoot-out and don’t be surprised if Joe Hart, England’s reserve keeper, ends up on penalty duty if he is on the pitch — statistics show he is his nation’s best penalty taker.

The question is whether Germany’s perfectionist approach to the opening 90 minutes and England’s increasingly hi-tech preparation for what follows will affect the result in the end.

But choosing a winner now is much like the dreaded penalties; a lottery.