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Antonin Panenka laughs like a bear might, a low rumble, suggesting mischief among the memories. He is sat in an office at Bohemians football club in Prague, recounting the story of his impudent, revolutionary penalty that not only won the 1976 European Championship for Czechoslovakia against West Germany but soured his relationship with the goalkeeper his spot-kick humiliated, Sepp Maier. “He went 35 years without uttering a single word to me,” he smiles.
But the feud went much deeper. “I read some articles that he even had a shooting target in his garage with my face on it that he used to fire darts at. We get on well enough now though.”
Saturday marks 50 years since that moment in Belgrade’s Red Star Stadium slipped into football folklore. With the final locked at 2-2 after extra time, Czechoslovakia and the reigning world champions found themselves in uncharted territory: the first penalty shootout to decide a major international tournament.
It nearly didn’t happen at all. The plan had been for a replay, until a request from the German FA pushed organisers towards penalties, a decision influenced, Panenka believes, by the fact Die Mannschaft had already booked their holidays.
By the time Bayern Munich’s Uli Hoeness blazed Germany’s fourth kick over the bar, the stage was set. Panenka stepped forward with the chance to win it. Then it happened. A brisk run-up, a momentary pause and the most delicate of stabbed touches. The ball floated, dead centre, as Maier hurled himself aside. For a heartbeat, it seemed to hang in the Belgrade air before dropping into the net. The Panenka was born.
In the decades since, many have tried it and succeeded. Zinedine Zidane clipped his against the crossbar and in at the 2006 World Cup final while Andrea Pirlo embarrassed a gurning Joe Hart at Euro 2012. Others have been less successful.
In 1992, Gary Lineker, one goal away from equalling Bobby Charlton’s record of 49 goals for England, duffed his against Brazil at Wembley. More recently, Morocco’s Brahim Díaz dinked his penalty into the waiting arms of the Senegal keeper Édouard Mendy in the Africa Cup of Nations final.
Panenka watches them all with pride and amusement. “It’s pure happiness to see these players using my penalty,” he says. “The only disadvantage is that I don’t get any royalties from it.”
It’s not for want of trying. “I used to think that every time someone takes one, they should have to pay me. Actually, back during the Communist days in Czechoslovakia, I spoke to some friends who worked at a patent office and tried to get it registered but they said it wasn’t possible which was a shame.”
Panenka’s penalty in the final wasn’t the first time he tried it. Two years before Belgrade, Panenka, a creative midfielder with Bohemians 1905, had started a friendly penalty competition with club goalkeeper, Zdenek Hruska.
Each day, the pair would stay behind after training and practise penalties. Ever the competitor, Panenka suggested a bet. He would take penalties and if he scored all five then Hruska would have to buy him some beers or some chocolate. If the keeper saved just one then Panenka would return the favour. But Panenka found himself losing badly and increasingly out of pocket.
Then came his brainwave. “I started to think about how the goalies always tend to dive towards one post or the other and I came up with the idea of just chipping the ball right down the middle instead. And it worked immediately,” he recalls.
Soon, the competition with Hruska tilted in Panenka’s favour. “I started winning our bets all the time which meant that I got all the beers and the chocolate. But that also meant I started to get fat.”
While Panenka attempted his penalty occasionally in friendlies and domestic games, it was still unknown outside Czechoslovakia as they headed into the European Championship in Yugoslavia, and that convinced Panenka to take it on to the international stage.
“I always knew that there was only one way I was ever going to take it, purely because nobody had done it before and nobody would ever think I would do it, especially in a final,” he says. “But I wasn’t 100% confident I would score – I was 1,000% confident.”
For Panenka, his penalty is more than just another opportunity to score. On one hand, he says, you have to have the personality to come up with the original idea itself but energy and work ethic is also needed to ensure having the right technique when the time arrives to take the penalty. “You can’t have one without the other,” he says.
Watch footage of Panenka’s penalty now and it’s unlike many of the versions you might see today. There is no theatrical meandering run-up and no staring down of the goalkeeper. It’s just a straight, aggressive run-up that persuades Maier that what is about to come is a shot struck with pace. Only at the last moment does Panenka kill his run-up, floating the ball into the air and leaving Maier diving helplessly to his left as the ball takes an eternity to drift and dive into the net.
It is, says Panenka, a thing of rare beauty. “I have seen it described as the ‘falling leaf’ penalty and I like that,” he reflects. “It works so beautifully.”
After the final, Panenka and his Czech teammates returned home to anything but a heroes’ welcome. “We expected at least some celebration or recognition but there was very little,” he recalls. “We said: ‘We are European champions!’ And they said: ‘So what? The league starts again tomorrow, so get back to work.’”
As Panenka returned to domestic football with Bohemians, however, his pioneering penalty had now become a weapon to employ sparingly. After Belgrade, he estimates he took another 15 penalties in his playing career, but used the Panenka only three more times, most notably in a European Championship qualifying victory over France in Bratislava in April 1979.
“The only time I ever missed was in a friendly against a small club in southern Bohemia. There had been a lot of heavy rain and the goalie was just stood in a big puddle so I don’t think he actually wanted to dive anyway,” he recalls. “He just stood there and caught it.”
Today, the 77-year-old Panenka and his penalty are known across the world, the result, he believes, of parents passing on this unique piece of footballing vocabulary – noun and verb – through YouTube and social media. But his popularity still surprises him.
Recently, he was on a plane in Madrid waiting to take off when another passenger recognised him. “Suddenly there was this long chain of people all wanting a selfie with me,” he smiles. “Our flight was even delayed.”
It’s possible to count on one hand those players whose names have become shorthand for invention, for a moment that bends the logic of the game itself. Some labels flatter, others fade, but the Panenka endures alongside the Cruyff Turn as something both daring and definitive.
Panenka shrugs at the idea of an ordinary alternative. Yes, a more conventional spot-kick might still have delivered a European title for Czechoslovakia, but it would not have rewritten his life, nor carved his name into football history.
Half a century on, what lingers is not just his medal or the trophy, but that choice – a split-second show of nerve that turned risk into immortality, and a footballer into folklore.
“The penalty I took really changed my life and the fact I’m still here 50 years later talking about it is absolutely amazing,” he adds. “I’m so happy I did it.”
