England believe they have never been better prepared for penalty shootouts. This is why
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Harry Kane will be key for England in any possible penalty shootout Paul Ellis/AFP via Getty Images
By Jack Pitt-BrookeJune 30, 2026 7:30 pm EDT UpdatedTen years and one month ago, Thomas Tuchel was at the end of his first season at Borussia Dortmund.
He was 42 years old and desperate to prove himself as one of football’s sharpest young managers. Dortmund had a good season in the Bundesliga, clicking emphatically after the winter break, finishing a strong second in the league. And on May 21 they went to the Olympiastadion in Berlin, to play Pep Guardiola’s Bayern Munich in the DFB-Pokal final.
This was Guardiola’s final game at Bayern, before he took over at Manchester City. He had just won his third straight Bundesliga title. His Bayern team was remarkable, defensively strong, technically precise and endlessly tactically flexible. Thiago Alcantara, Arturo Vidal, Thomas Muller, Robert Lewandowski and the rest.
But Tuchel relished the tactical chess match with Guardiola. “We prepared everything in this match,” he said. “I prepared everything. We needed to twist the tactics, they twisted the tactics. We twisted the structure, he twisted the structure. It was like a fight. People got tired, it went into extra time.” After 120 minutes, the game finished 0-0.
But there was a problem. Tuchel had spent so much time obsessing over tactical details beforehand, but had ignored something that could be decisive. “The whistle went and I was just not prepared,” he said. “I forgot to prepare for a penalty shoot-out.” So Tuchel was left, scrambling around, asking his exhausted players whether they would take a penalty or not, and in what order. Bayern, on the other hand, were fully prepared and knew exactly what to do: Vidal, Lewandowski, Joshua Kimmich, Muller, Douglas Costa.
You can probably guess by this point, if you did not know already. Sven Bender and Sokratis Papastathopoulos both missed and Dortmund lost. Tuchel was devastated. “A very painful experience and a big, big scar on me, because I felt really, really badly that I had let myself down,” he said. “It was the first time. It will never happen again. So from there, we started our own programme, our own preparation.”
Thomas Tuchel feels England have every base covered for shootouts (Richard Pelham/Getty Images)A decade on, the spectre of penalties looms over Tuchel again. He is no longer a young manager proving himself at Dortmund but a 52-year-old at the top of the game, trying to guide England to the World Cup final. He will have seen both Germany and the Netherlands get knocked out on penalties on Monday evening, as he prepared to fly to Atlanta on Tuesday for England’s last-32 game with DR Congo. There is every chance that England will need penalties at some point.
At least, this time, Tuchel is not just relying on himself. When he took over the England job, he inherited a well-established and high-functioning penalties operation. The turnaround in England’s record on penalties has been one of the big wins of the last decade, with notable successes against Colombia (2018), Switzerland (2019) and Switzerland again (2024), even if the biggest shoot-out of all, Italy (at the final of Euro 2020) was lost.
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“Now I go into the FA and I have — on the highest level, since years and years — a penalty programme that is so easy (for me to) just (pick up) and wait for people to tell me who are the best shooters. We trained it. We have a process in place. So we are prepared.
“This has become such an important part, a very special part of football now, that you can prepare and do the best to be prepared, which we did. We have assistant coaches, we have background staff who just set one of the best programmes in place that I have witnessed. So we know exactly what is going to happen. And the platform is there.”
How England will actually perform in a penalty shoot-out is still ultimately unknowable. But there is confidence in the squad about how England are shaping up.
Declan Rice, speaking to reporters at England’s Kansas City training camp on Monday, could not have been more positive about England’s chances in a shoot-out. “I look at this group now, I don’t think there’s a better crop of penalty-takers that England have probably ever had,” he said, listing Harry Kane, Ivan Toney, Marcus Rashford, Anthony Gordon, Bukayo Saka, Jude Bellingham and himself.
England tasted success in their shootout against Switzerland at Euro 2024 (Dean Mouhtaropoulos/Getty Images)Rice spoke glowingly about Kane’s penalty record, the repetitions he puts in and the certainty he goes in with. Rice also believes that the Trionda ball being used this summer should give takers an extra edge. “With these balls as well,” he said, “from 12 yards, if you hit it hard and well, I feel like, for keepers, it’s tough to save. If you put them in the corners, it’s really tough.”
If there is a downside to England’s battery of good penalty takers, then it comes for Jordan Pickford. He joked after England’s 2-0 win over Panama in New Jersey that he was now “down the pecking order” for taking one. But he knows his job is to make saves — his stop from Carlos Bacca in Moscow is still one of England’s greatest World Cup moments — and he has confidence in his ability to keep doing that.
“It’s all about belief and believing in each other,” Pickford said. “They have confidence I can save a penalty. I have confidence they can score them. But we want to be winning the game, we don’t want to go to penalties.”
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Tuchel ultimately knows that even the best penalty process in the world, or the best penalty takers, is “no guarantee” of anything. He has not been involved in a shoot-out since 2022, when his Chelsea side lost both domestic cup finals to Jurgen Klopp’s Liverpool on penalties. The Carabao Cup shoot-out ended up with every single player scoring until Kepa Arrizabalaga missed. Liverpool won 11-10.
“I had crazy penalty shootouts,” Tuchel said. “So it is what it is. But now, it is on the highest level at the moment, thanks to the FA of course, and thanks to my development. It is just another example that you sometimes have to have a painful experience to understand where to get better.”
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Tagged To: FIFA Men's World CupInternational FootballPremier LeagueSoccerEngland‘Off the Table’—One Potential Vinicius Junior Transfer Spot Ruled Out
‘Off the Table’—One Potential Vinicius Junior Transfer Spot Ruled Out
The winger’s future at Real Madrid is anything but certain. Amanda Langell|
Should Vinicius Junior inch closer to a Real Madrid exit, the Brazilian will have clubs all over Europe knocking on his door—but Chelsea will reportedly not be joining in on the potential transfer race.
Vinicius Jr, whose current deal with Los Blancos expires at the end of next season, has made little progress in securing a contract extension. Talks began in January 2025 but have long since reached an impasse over salary disagreements.
It goes without saying that clubs are keeping a close eye on the winger’s situation and could be prompted into action if Vinicius Jr decides to leave the Spanish capital for a fresh start elsewhere. The Premier League remains an attractive destination, but not all of the ‘Big Six’ are interested.
MARCA report a move to Chelsea is “completely off the table” after Vinicius Jr’s public falling out with Xabi Alonso, who is the Blues’ new manager following the departure of Liam Rosenior. The west London outfit was once interested in the Brazil international, but that interest no longer exists now that Alonso is in charge.
The Moment Everything Changed for Vinicius Jr and Alonso
There were murmurings of potential tension between Vinicius Jr and Alonso during the early months of the manager’s tenure at the Bernabéu. The Spaniard made Vinicius Jr earn his place on the left wing, his home since he made the move to the Spanish capital, and benched him for matches he would normally start.
The simmering feud between the two reached a boiling point in October during Real Madrid’s 2–1 victory over Barcelona. Alonso took Vinicius Jr out of the game in the 72nd minute, prompting the forward to lose his cool and storm down the tunnel while his teammates still battled on the pitch.
Vinicius Jr later publicly apologized to the club, the fans and his teammates, but left out his manager. Reports then emerged that the No. 7 would not sign a new contract while Alonso was in charge.
When the former Bayer Leverkusen boss eventually lost his job in January, Vinicius Jr was one of the only players not to send him well wishes on social media. There was clearly no love lost between the two, and it comes as no surprise they would not want to work together again in the future, even if the opportunity arose.
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Where Vinicius Jr Stands With Real Madrid
Real Madrid president Florentino Pérez previously vocalized his desire to lock down Vinicius Jr and keep the Brazilian in a white shirt for years to come. “There’s time,” he said when asked about renewing his superstar back in May.
“I’d love for him to stay forever. He’s won us the last two Champions Leagues, and he identifies really well with the club. You know who doesn’t like him? Those who aren’t Real Madrid fans.”
Vinicius Jr has also expressed how much he wants to stay at the Bernabéu, and reports claim he already ruled out any potential transfer this summer. Yet the 25-year-old has seemingly not budged on his salary demands, the one thing keeping him from pledging more than next season to Real Madrid.
He wants to rake in a historic $34.2 million (€30 million) per season, but the club is reluctant to adhere to such demands, which would make Vinicius Jr the highest-paid player on the team. For a deal to be struck, one of the parties will have to compromise—or else a race is coming to snatch the 2024 Ballon d’Or runner-up one he becomes a free agent next summer.
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AMANDA LANGELLAmanda Langell is a Sports Illustrated FC freelance writer and editor. Born and raised in New York City, her first loves were the Yankees, the Rangers and Broadway before Real Madrid took over her life. Had it not been for her brother’s obsession with Cristiano Ronaldo, she would have never lived through so many magical Champions League nights 3,600 miles away from the Bernabéu. When she’s not consumed by Spanish and European soccer, she’s traveling, reading or losing her voice at a concert.
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NPR's Nina Totenberg Apologizes for False Report about Alito Retiring
NPR Correspondent Nina Totenberg Apologizes for False Report about Justice Alito Retiring
Nina Totenberg, American Legal Affairs correspondent for NPR, apologized on Tuesday after she falsely reported that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito is retiring.
Totenberg issued her apology on NPR’s All Things Considered podcast, chalking her false report down to a “rookie mistake.”
“It’s entirely on me. It’s not anybody else’s fault,” she said.
Totenberg then read the text apology that she personally sent to Justice Alito:
Dear Justice Alito, there are no words to adequately apologize for today’s error in reporting your retirement,” she said. “It was entirely my fault. I rushed out of the courtroom after the opinion announcements, and when I realized that the usual rush of folks after a few minutes had not happened, I asked somebody was going on inside, to which the answer was, ‘retirement announcements.’
“I didn’t hear the ‘s’ on ‘announcements,’ and I assumed something no reporter should ever do, that you were retiring. It was the worst professional mistake of my more than 50 years in journalism. I could go on, but I don’t know what else to say, except that I am so, so sorry,” she added.
NPR had a news report about Alito’s retirement already written by the time Totenberg informed the newsroom, which many publications keep on hand for immediate publication in case of sudden retirement or possible death.
“Totenberg spoke with both her intern, who was at the court with her, and NPR Executive Editor Krishnadev Calamur and told them what she heard,” per NPR. “Calamur surfaced the story that NPR had previously prepared for the day Alito did announce his retirement and published it. The information was also broadcast on NPR’s airwaves. NPR was offering special live coverage of the court’s decision on the birthright citizenship case.”
“The story was published on NPR’s website at 10:51 a.m. ET and it was live for about five minutes. It was up for longer periods on some member station websites. It was taken down and replaced with an editor’s note by 10:57 a.m. The error was corrected on the broadcast at 11:07 a.m. ET,” it added.
