Af vítaspyrnum

10.4.2008 | 11:42

Mikið var dásamlegt að horfa á vítaspyrnu Roma gegn United sleikja þakskeggið á Old Trafford.

Leikmaður Roma hefur líklega ekki verið að hugsa um hinstu rök tilverunnar. Þó að skotið hafi verið háfleygt. Eins og Andrew Anthony hefur útlistað manna best í bókinni On Penalties.

The penalty, is it a metaphor for the indecision of modern life or simply an easy way of scoring a goal? I think it's safe to assume that this question was not in the forefront of David Batty's mind when he walked to take his ill-conceived penalty against Argentina in the 1998 World Cup. Certainly, there was nothing in the imperviously stoic demeanour of the Yourkshireman to suggest that he viewed that penalty shoot-out as anything but a penalty shoot-out. Whatever it meant to Batty, it wasn't a workshop on existential doubt. His later comments regarding his thinking at the time would seem to confirm that he tended towards the "just stick it in the back of the net" approach. "I were really confident," he explained some months afterwards. "I said to Shearer in the centre circle: "I'm gonna blast it down the middle."" Those are not the words of a man who was burdened by the unbearable weight of symbolism.