ANYONE WHO SAYS that penalties are a lottery are deluding themselves. Let me give you some statistics (if you can bear to read them).

In World Cup finals matches, Germany have taken part in four penalty shoot-outs and won all of them, nailing 17 out of 18 strikes. England, on the other hand, have played three, lost three. You do not need a PhD in maths to see that this is not a distribution that could credibly be described as random.

Besides, we have the evidence of what happened on the pitch. Last week, the Germans raced in and struck the ball with the clean, crisp fluency that you would expect from men who insure their feet for millions. The penalties of the England players on Saturday, on the other hand, had all the conviction of a David Cameron press release.

To get a handle on what might be at issue, let us take a detour to the training pitch. Ask any professional player and he will tell you that he invariably scores penalties in practice, which is hardly surprising when you consider that the ball is struck from 12 yards at a velocity of up to 70mph at a target area of more than 21 square yards.

The difference, then, between Germany and England is not to be found in their respective abilities.

No, the difference is to be found in what happens between the players’ ears when they step up to the plate in the crucible of a World Cup showdown. The Germans are able to replicate what they do in practice every week of the year. The English are not. That is the whole 12 yards.

The inescapable conclusion is that the England football team suffer from institutionalised choking when it comes to World Cup shoot-outs.

The players are simply unable to bring themselves to do that which comes most naturally to them: kick a football hard and accurately. They slow down, their muscles stiffen and their facial features freeze over.

England’s penalty-takers on Saturday looked more like men about to be led to the gallows than prospective heroes contemplating a place in the semi-finals of the World Cup. Even the successful penalty of Owen Hargreaves was a wet blanket.

As Ricardo, the Portugal goalkeeper, said yesterday: “I could see in the eyes of the English players that they were not OK. The goal was shrinking for them. I just had to prolong their suffering. My technique is to make them feel worried. Then I try to read in his eyes or in his soul and try to predict what he is going to do and then fool him. I felt like I had many good conditions to beat the English in the penalties.”

All of which poses the question: why do England players become so visibly angst-ridden? Many will point to the phenomenon of World Cup scapegoating, the quadrennial national pastime that involves pinning the blame for the team’s exit on a specific individual. As Stuart Pearce, Chris Waddle, David Batty et al could painfully recount, there is no better way to implicate oneself in the shattering of a nation’s dreams than to miss a penalty.

The psychological stumbling block for many sportsmen is wanting to win too much. That is not the problem for English football. The players are not thinking about anything as upbeat as winning as they take the long walk from the halfway line. They are too burdened with the prospect of becoming the face of a tabloid dartboard.

‘FIRST SAVE SHATTERED ENGLAND’

JOSÉ MOURINHO, THE Chelsea manager, believes that Ricardo’s save from Frank Lampard in the penalty shoot-out was the decisive blow to England in their defeat in the World Cup quarter-final in Gelsenkirchen on Saturday. The Portuguese coach felt that in foiling the man he considers to be England’s best penalty-taker, Ricardo shattered England’s morale. Only Owen Hargreaves converted for England from the spot and they lost the shoot-out 3-1.

“When the opposing team chooses its best penalty-taker to take the first kick and the goalkeeper saves a penalty from someone who has hardly missed in two years, then it gives a huge injection of confidence to us and shatters England’s confidence,” Mourinho said. “After Lampard’s kick you could see Steven Gerrard with his head in his hands.”