Ajax vs Panathinaikos penalty shootout analysis: 34 kicks and 24 minutes of drama – Sports News (Trending Perfect)

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

Panathinaikos midfielder Daniel Mancini stepped up to take the first penalty in the shootout against Ajax after the Greek side scored a last-gasp equaliser to force a shootout in the Europa League qualifiers on Thursday night.

But while he technically “took” the penalty, it was as if he had blown the ball away with the force he exerted when he took it. The miserable spot kick, easily saved by 40-year-old goalkeeper Remko Pasveer, was the most fitting way to start a shootout that was characterised by slapstick comedy, sheer incompetence and occasional bursts of excellence.

In total, there were 34 penalties. We probably don't need to tell you that this is a record in UEFA competitions. In total, 25 penalties were awarded, two of which were completely off target, and seven penalties were saved – five by Pasveer and two by Panathinaikos goalkeeper Bartlomiej Dragowski.

Ajax, who finished second in the shootout, were awarded five 'match points' – penalties would have decided the match – and missed their first four before emerging victorious.

Striker Brian Brobbey had come off the bench for Ajax during extra time, perhaps not to take a penalty (there were 10 minutes left when he came on) but certainly with penalties on his mind. Brobbey was one of 12 players who had to take two penalties. He missed both. What’s more, both were potentially decisive.

Missing one penalty in a shootout will bring you shame and embarrassment, but you'll get over it. Missing two penalties will haunt you for years. Missing two potential penalties… well, at least his team won in the end.

After Mancini's first (terrible) penalty, the next eight were brilliantly taken by Steven Bergwijn, Kenneth Taylor (both of Ajax), and former Leicester City winger Tite (with Panathinaikos), among others.

Then things started to get weird. Brobbey stepped up, and there seemed to be an expectation that he wouldn’t make a huge mistake: he wasn’t a typical penalty taker, but he had only missed one penalty in his career and had a great conversion rate as an academy player. The home crowd chanted his name, he puffed out his cheeks, and he struck it with reasonable force to the goalkeeper’s right… and Dragowski saved it. The air left the stadium as if it had suddenly become the air chamber of a spaceship.

Is it possible to miss a penalty “ethically” and actually score it? If so, that’s what Dutch midfielder Tony Vilhena did, taking the next spot kick for the Greek side. He’s a young Feyenoord player who spent eight seasons in the first team… which means Ajax fans hated him.

He fired a low kick to Pasveer's right, and the goalkeeper managed to deal with it with more than one hand (or arm, maybe?).

…but the ball flew out from under his feet, and for a brief moment it looked like it might stay out of goal – to the point where the Ajax fans started celebrating – but it eventually looped across the goal area and landed in the opposite corner.

After listening to the home crowd's thoughts, Vilhena decided to return the favor by silencing them. Will that come back to haunt him later in the penalty shootout? Definitely not.

Then it was Jordan Henderson’s turn, perhaps to remind everyone that he still plays for Ajax. Henderson and penalties aren’t particularly good friends: it’s easy to forget that because England won, but he missed a spot-kick in their 2018 World Cup win against Colombia, and since then he has only taken one competitive penalty in normal time for club or country… which he also missed for England in a pre-Euro 2020 friendly against Romania. Fortunately, he had no problems here, firing the ball straight into the middle of the pitch with his left foot.

Nemanja Maksimovic then squandered another chance for Panathinaikos, which Pasveer saved brilliantly. But Ajax were unable to take their chances again, with Bertrand Traore hitting a high shot and a cross, a very difficult one from 12 yards out. After that kick, a melee broke out in the centre circle, and tensions rose in the lengthy penalty shootout, with referee Chris Kavanagh issuing yellow cards to a player from each side.

The next penalty went to Panathinaikos' Sverrir Ingason, who shot low but it was too close for Pasveer to save for the third time. At this point Pasveer and his teammate Dragowski hugged each other and started laughing: Yes, it's getting really ridiculous now. It got even more ridiculous when Ajax missed another chance to win the penalty, with Dragowski saving a shot from Ajax defender Yuri Bas.

This was the penalty shootout that no one wanted to win. On the touchline, Ajax coach Francesco Farioli had the expression on his face as if he were watching himself undergo open-heart surgery. His counterpart Diego Alonso was the same.

But the next 14 penalties were all excellent, and the goalkeepers had almost no chance. They took their own kicks and scored with minimal fuss, which only heightened the tension. After all, 14 penalties equalled a full-and-a-half shootout. Panathinaikos’ substitutes and coaches, holding hands on the touchline, were reprimanded for encroaching on the pitch. At one point, Farioli stepped back from the touchline and sat alone on the bench, his aorta pulsating about two feet in front of him.

But then came another chance to win for Ajax: Panathinaikos centre-back Filip Mladenovic tried to go in hard, but it was too close for Pasveer to save on his left.

We could have made amends. As he had done earlier in the shootout, Brobbey walked forward, knowing that his goal meant Ajax would advance. Then he stepped forward, puffed out his cheeks again, determined not to make the same mistake again – this time, he wouldn’t let Dragowski get close to him.

He didn't – the problem was that the only people getting near the ball were in the back rows of the Johan Cruyff Arena. Brobbey had a brilliant penalty kick from Chris Waddle into the stands…

…then he proceeded to collapse into the grass…

…face down, unable to believe what he just did…

…providing a classic “you can see the moment his heart breaks in two” moment…

But wait. Here comes Vilhena. You may remember that the former Feyenoord player silenced the Ajax fans after he almost scored his first penalty, which you can understand: he got abused, he scored, and his work for the night was done because there was no way he would have to take another penalty, right?

Ah. Unfortunately, he was up against the extraordinary Pasveer again. The 40-year-old is not Ajax's first choice keeper, but he took the opportunity to make an impression here: Vilhena tried to win the same penalty he won on his first, but this time Pasveer managed to save it for the fifth time.

“Five goals is a lot, yeah,” he said after the game, adding that he had been laughing with former Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder, who was working for Dutch television, during the shootout. “I saved a penalty every now and then, but I don't think you go through such a crazy situation very often.”

Pasveer saved a penalty in regulation time in 2021, in the Eredivisie while playing for Vitesse against Heerenveen. His last penalty shootout was again for Vitesse, against AVV Swift in the 2017 Dutch Cup. He did not save a single penalty that night.

“Remko asked me why there was no picture of a goalkeeper who had kept a clean sheet,” Farioli told AFP, referring to the many portraits of Ajax greats that adorn the stadium walls. “I told him that maybe he should play a little better. But now I think we should quickly put up a picture of him.”

Once again, Ajax had one penalty to win the game. And this time they did something interesting: while the other players who took the second penalty kick did so in the same order as they did in the first round, Ajax messed things up by sending winger Anton Gaye to take the 17th penalty, instead of Henderson. Gaye fired his penalty into the bottom corner, Dragowski went the wrong way, and finally, finally, finally, the game was over.

From the moment Mancini took the first penalty to Gaye's decisive strike into the net, 24 minutes and two seconds passed. Ajax won 13-12 and advanced to the play-off round. If they beat Polish side Jagiellonia Bialystok, they will qualify for the Europa League.

It wasn’t the longest penalty shootout ever. That title still belongs to SC Dimona and Shimshon Tel Aviv, who took 56 penalties in the semi-finals of the Israeli third division playoffs earlier this year.

But from Pasveer's saves to Brobbey's two missed chances and Farioli's sheer desperation, there was enough drama here.

Ajax face NAC Breda in their second Eredivisie match of the season this week. They are expected to register a quiet and boring 1-0 win.

(Top photo: Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu Agency via Getty Images)