A lot has been said about the Europa League final penalty shootout in the past week.
David de Gea failed to save a single penalty on the night, with Villarreal winning after scoring 11, and he missed the decisive penalty himself.
It has led to discussions as to why Ole Gunnar Solskjaer didn’t sub on Dean Henderson before the end of extra-time – but let’s not pretend that is a common practice for managers.
Louis van Gaal did it with Holland at a World Cup when the squad environment is very different to club football. What if Solskjaer brought Henderson on and it went the same way? You’d have people saying the manager should have stuck with De Gea.
Former England goalkeeper Peter Shilton believes that it’s disrespectful to even suggest that you’d take off a keeper who has played almost 120 minutes for you.
“With penalty shootouts you need a bit of luck,” Shilton told the ipaper.
“Some goalkeepers are better than others or luckier. I think it’s a bit disrespectful to say to a goalkeeper ‘look you’ve played the whole 90 minutes or whatever but you’re not good enough to save a penalty’.
“Jordan Pickford faced four at the last World Cup and didn’t save any and then the fifth one the fella [Carlos Bacca] gave him a chance and he saved one. At Euro ’96, David Seaman saved one against Spain and then didn’t save any out of six against Germany. That’s how penalty shootouts are.”
I couldn’t agree more with Shilton – and it’s not very often I have said that.
However, I don’t think all criticism is disrespectful. De Gea is not a good penalty stopper.
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I think in soccer no one player takes the blame for a loss. In the said final our team did not click only two players to my view were exceptional and i don’t think its fair to blame David who had single handedly won many games for us .Just go and watch the Ac Milan and AS Roma games just to mention a few. Please don’t kill David’s spirit. Blame all from Manager to players for poor showing during the game, we could have won in regular time but poor game plan and tactics cost us. Let’s build a stronge team and stop the blame game. Thanks.
There’s nothing disprectful with substituting a keeper when a game has gone into shootout.With due respect to Shilton whom we all herald as an icon & one of the best we’ve ever seen, he totally misses the point on this one.Soccer is a team sport & nothing should be taken personally when such decisions are made.if outfield players who aren’t prolific on the spot can be taken off & those who are more able brought in on such situations why can’t the same be applied to a keeper who is also a player as the rest??is it a case of double standards here??& isnt a shootout just as part & parcel of the match as normal time??if substitutions can be made in normal time, why not in the shootout if there’s need for that?
Ole’s lack of decisiveness in critical times is definitely more to blame than De Gea’s ineptitude at saving penalties.Ole should simply have bitten the bullet and make a change.even if the gamble had failed I doubt if serious soccer fans would have begrudged him for that.at least he would have tried to make a gamble.who doesn’t know about De Gea’s poor showing at saving penalties? If our manager had been up to the task we wouldn’t even had gone for a shoot out in the first place. I blame Ole more than David on this one.
Ole is not a decisive coach. Most of the games we have wondered how he prefers Martial to Cavan. And this probably cost us the league championship. I guess Man United is too big for Ole.