Evaluation of the penalty shootout between Ajax and Panathinaikos: 34 shots and 24 minutes of drama

Maybe we should always have known from the start that this might take some time.

Panathinaikos' Argentine midfielder Daniel Mancini scored the primary penalty within the shootout against Ajax after the Greeks equalised within the closing stages and compelled their Europa League qualifier to a penalty shootout on Thursday evening.

But although he technically missed the penalty, he might as well have just blown the ball away, a lot power did he put into the shot. A pathetic penalty, effortlessly saved by 40-year-old goalkeeper Remko Pasveer, was one of the best begin to a penalty shootout that was marked by slapstick, sheer incompetence and occasional brilliance.

A complete of 34 penalties were taken. That is, we probably don't have to let you know, a UEFA competition record. In total, 25 were scored, two were completely wide and 7 were saved – five by Pasveer and two by Panathinaikos goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski.

Ajax, who finished second on penalties, had five “match points” – a penalty shootout would have resulted in victory – and wasted the primary 4 before emerging victorious.

Striker Brian Brobbey was brought off the Ajax bench in overtime, perhaps not specifically to take a penalty (there have been 10 minutes left when he got here on), but actually with a shootout in mind. He was considered one of the 12 players who needed to take two penalties. He missed each. And more importantly, each were potentially decisive penalties.

Missing a penalty in a shootout is a large shame, but you recover from it. Missing two penalties can haunt you for years. Missing two potential winners… well, a minimum of your team won ultimately.

After Mancini's first (terrible) penalty, the subsequent eight were taken very skillfully, including by Steven Bergwijn, Kenneth Taylor (each Ajax) and former Leicester City winger Tete (for Panathinaikos).

Then things got weird. Brobbey stepped up and there gave the impression to be an expectation that he would make short work of it: he shouldn’t be an everyday penalty taker, but he has only missed one in his skilled profession and has a wonderful conversion rate as an academy player. The home crowd chanted his name, he puffed out his cheeks, shot the ball with quite a little bit of force to the suitable of the goalkeeper… and Dragowski saved it. The air left the stadium as if it had suddenly develop into the airlock of a spaceship.

Is it possible to “morally” miss a penalty that you need to have scored? If so, then that's exactly what the Greek team's next taker, Dutch midfielder Tonny Vilhena, did. He's a Feyenoord youth player and played of their first team for eight seasons… which is one other way of claiming the Ajax crowd hated him.

He fired a low kick to the suitable past Pasveer, and the goalkeeper bent to this point that he got greater than only a hand (possibly an arm?) on it…

…however the ball squirted out from under him, it looked like it might stay out for a moment – a lot in order that the Ajax fans began cheering – but eventually it bounced over the goal and rolled into the alternative corner.

Vilhena, who had heard the house fans' thoughts, decided to provide something back by silencing the stands. Would that come back to haunt him later within the penalty shootout? Certainly not.

Jordan Henderson was next up for Ajax, perhaps also to remind everyone that he still plays for them. Henderson and penalties aren’t particularly good friends: it's easy to forget that because England won, but he missed of their 2018 World Cup shoot-out victory against Colombia and has only taken one penalty in normal time for club or country since then… which he also missed for England in a pre-Euro 2020 friendly against Romania. Thankfully he had no problems here, firing the ball straight down the center into the online with the within his foot.

Then one other miss: Nemanja Maksimovic made a mistake for Panathinaikos which Pasveer saved brilliantly. But again Ajax couldn't capitalise on their probability as Bertrand Traore shot high and wide, which is sort of difficult to do from 12 metres out. After this penalty a row broke out within the centre circle, each teams became irritated on this prolonged penalty shoot-out and referee Chris Kavanagh cautioned a player from either side.

The next penalty was taken by Panathinaikos player Sverrir Ingason, who got here low but too near Pasveer, who saved his third penalty. At that moment he and his counterpart Dragowski hugged one another and began laughing: yes, now it was getting pretty silly. And it got even sillier when Ajax wasted one other probability to win when Dragowski saved a shot from Ajax defender Youri Baas.

This was the penalty shootout that no person desired to win. On the sidelines, Ajax coach Francesco Farioli looked as if he had just undergone open-heart surgery. His counterpart Diego Alonso looked similar.

The next 14 penalties, nonetheless, were all excellent, with the goalkeepers hardly having a probability. They took the shots themselves and converted them without much fuss, which only increased the strain. After all, 14 penalties is one and a half times greater than a traditional penalty shootout. The Panathinaikos substitutes and coaches, who were holding onto the sidelines with their arms, were reprimanded for encroaching on the pitch. At one point, Farioli retreated from the sidelines and sat alone on the bench, his aorta pulsing about two feet in front of him.

But then Ajax had one other probability to win: Panathinaikos centre-back Filip Mladenovic tried a robust shot, but was too near Pasveer, who parried to the left.

Redemption was at hand. Just as he had done within the penalty shootout, Brobbey marched forward, knowing that if he scored, Ajax could be through. He advanced, puffed out his cheeks again, determined to not make the identical mistake again – this time he wouldn’t let Dragowski get anywhere near it.

And he didn't – the issue was that the one individuals who got near the ball were within the back rows of the Johan Cruyff Arena. Brobbey fired an absolute Chris Waddle penalty high into the stands…

… after which crumbled to the bottom …

…face down, unable to imagine what he had just done…

…and creates a classic “you can see the exact moment his heart breaks in two” moment…

But wait. Here comes Vilhena. You'll keep in mind that the previous Feyenoord player silenced the Ajax fans after he (almost) scored his first penalty. You can understand that: he was insulted, he scored and his job was done for the evening because there was no way he was going to need to rating one other penalty, right?

Alas. Unfortunately, he was again faced with the extraordinary Pasveer. The 40-year-old shouldn’t be Ajax's first goalkeeper, but he took his probability to make an impression here: Vilhena attempted the identical penalty as the primary, but this time Pasveer was in a position to show more physicality and save the ball along with his fifth save.

“Five is quite a lot, yes,” he said after the sport with a serious expression, also saying that he had laughed in the course of the penalty shootout with former Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder, who was working on the sidelines for Dutch television. “I save a penalty every now and then, but I don't think you see something as crazy as this very often.”

Pasveer last saved a penalty in regular time within the Eredivisie in 2021, when he played for Vitesse against Heerenveen. The last penalty shootout he was involved in was again for Vitesse, against AVV Swift within the KNVB Cup (Dutch Cup) in 2017. He didn't save a single one which night.

“Remko asked why there was never a picture of a goalkeeper who had not conceded a goal,” Farioli told AFP, referring to the various photos of Ajax greats that adorn the partitions of the stadium. “I told him maybe he should play a bit better. But now I think we should quickly put up a picture of him.”

Once again, Ajax needed only one penalty to win. This time, something interesting happened to them: while the opposite players who took a second penalty did so in the identical order as in the primary round, Ajax mixed things up and sent winger Anton Gaaei to the bench for the seventeenth penalty, as an alternative of Henderson. He shot low into the underside corner, Dragowski went the unsuitable way and eventually, finally, finally it was over.

From the moment Mancini took the primary penalty until Gaaei's winner found the back of the online, 24 minutes and two seconds had passed. Ajax won 13-12 and moved into the play-off round. If they beat Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok, they are going to qualify for the league phase of the Europa League.

This was not the longest penalty shootout ever. That title still belongs to SC Dimona and Shimshon Tel Aviv, who took 56 penalties within the Israeli Third Division play-off semi-finals earlier this 12 months.

But from Pasveer's saves to Brobbey's two misses to Farioli's utter despair, there was good enough drama here.

Ajax face NAC Breda this weekend of their second Eredivisie game of the season, and one suspects that a pleasant, quiet, boring 1-0 win will do them good.