Ivan Toney glared at Switzerland’s goalkeeper Yann Sommer as if they were two cowboys locked in a duel.
After serving an eight-month suspension for breaching the Football Association’s betting rules, Toney only scored four times in 17 appearances for Brentford in the second half of last season. It was a disappointing return to action for a striker who scored 20 goals in 33 games during the 2022-23 campaign and it meant there was a huge question mark over whether he would be included in Gareth Southgate’s England squad for the European Championship.
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Toney managed to secure a seat on the plane to Germany and his exceptional penalty record helped his cause. Since he moved to west London from Peterborough United in September 2020 for £5million plus add-ons, he has converted 22 out of 23 attempts (95 per cent). Brentford’s head coach Thomas Frank has described him as the best in the world.
The 28-year-old was presented with the chance to repay Southgate’s faith and remind everybody of his talent during England’s penalty shootout against Switzerland in the quarter-finals of the Euros on Saturday evening. This was the exact moment Toney would have dreamt about while he was banned from football last summer.
Toney scored from the spot in England’s 2-2 draw with Belgium in March. Despite the level of the opposition and the fact it was his first start for England, that game was officially a friendly, which meant the last time he had taken a penalty in a competitive fixture before taking on Sommer was in Brentford’s 2-1 defeat to Newcastle United in April 2023. Toney calmly slotted his penalty into the bottom corner to help England progress to the semi-finals, where they will face the Netherlands on Wednesday evening.
“The pressure was crazy but he doesn’t seem bothered by it,” Ben Lyttleton, author of Twelve Yards: The Art and Psychology of the Perfect Penalty Kick, tells The Athletic. “He was loving it. It was a fantastic penalty. He has a system and a routine that works for him.”
Toney’s technique is unusual. After placing the ball down on the spot, he takes three small steps backwards.
When the referee blows the whistle, Toney pauses before slowly striding towards the ball and striking it with his right foot.
He never takes his eyes off the goalkeeper.
“I started practising this technique in training after the rule came out that keepers have to stay on the line,” he told Brentford’s media team in 2022. “Without giving too much away, the closer you are to the ball, the less time the goalkeeper has to react. When the keeper does react, it’s too late. You have to wait for the last step. If the keeper makes a move, you know where to put it; if he doesn’t move you have to pick a corner.”
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Lyttleton studied thousands of penalties as part of his research and broke them down into two categories. The “goalkeeper independent” technique involves a penalty taker targeting a specific area of the goal, while the “goalkeeper dependent” method is when a penalty taker will wait for the keeper to commit before, in theory, placing the ball in the opposite corner.
At the beginning of his career, Toney relied on the first technique to various levels of success. Toney used this approach when he missed a penalty for Peterborough during their 4-0 defeat to Barnsley in October 2018.
As you can see below, Toney positions himself just inside the box.
Once the referee blows his whistle, Toney takes less than half a second to start his run-up. Before he has even made contact with the ball, Adam Davies shuffles to the left which allows him to produce a simple save.
Toney persisted with this method and used it to score the last penalty he took for Peterborough in a 4-1 victory against Ipswich Town in February 2020 — a carbon copy of his effort against Barnsley.
Except, on this occasion, he scores — even though Will Norris dives in the right direction.
But by the time he took his first penalty for Brentford, in a 1-1 draw with Millwall in September 2020, he had changed his style and used the goalkeeper-dependent method. Toney adopted a shorter run-up, which has been reduced even more since, took time before hitting the ball and looked at Bartosz Bialkowski’s positioning throughout.
Toney’s stance is critical here because it presents him with multiple options depending on the goalkeeper’s behaviour. By opening up his body he has the choice to target the right-hand side of the goal or swivel his hips, wrap his foot around the ball and slot it towards the left.
Bialkowski bends his knees and reveals his intentions, so Toney sends the ball the opposite way.
“The goalkeeper-dependent technique is harder to do,” Lyttleton says. “It is a very particular technical skill to wait for the keeper to make the first move and then roll it to the other side, but my studies have shown that it is more successful.
“Toney’s short run-up is fascinating. A lot of players have a longer run-up and slow down as they approach the ball — Jorginho and Bruno Fernandes are good examples. What Toney is doing is similar to Eden Hazard. That requires enormous levels of skill and self-belief which can only come from hours and hours of practice. You cannot just turn up to a match and do that. Penalties are a trainable skill that can be improved.”
There is another part of Toney’s technique that makes him stand out. Geir Jordet is the author of Pressure: Lessons from the Psychology of the Penalty Shootout and he explains that taking a deep breath plays a significant role in Toney’s process.
“That pause enables him to make sure he is fully composed and ready,” Jordet tells The Athletic. “It’s control over himself and the situation. For a shot like this, your mental state when you hit the ball and right before is critical. It is such a sophisticated visual perception process that you are about to execute, so if you are not fully (concentrating), you are going to miss.”
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According to Toney, it is a chance to take control. “Most penalties are missed as soon as the referee blows the whistle,” he said. “People think, because the ref’s blown the whistle, the taker has to move quickly; the whistle being blown just means that you can take the penalty when you’re ready.
“I take a penalty when I’m ready, on my terms. Before, it was ‘hear the whistle, go!’ Now, I take longer. I don’t look at the ball, I just keep my eyes on the keeper. It is risky. Sometimes I think I’m going to hit it with my standing foot.”
In the 2022 World Cup final, Argentina’s goalkeeper Emiliano Martinez employed the dark arts to distract France’s penalty takers. Martinez threw the ball away from Aurelien Tchouameni who then dragged his shot wide and danced erratically on the line before Kingsley Coman missed. The International Football Association Board (IFAB) have changed the rules which means goalkeepers are prevented from distracting or delaying penalty takers, but Toney had found ways to block out their shenanigans.
When Brentford faced Norwich City in March 2022, Toney scored two penalties and, on both occasions, Tim Krul tried to put him off. Krul turned around to the crowd and encouraged them to start making noise. He kicked the posts and bounced up and down on his line, but it failed to have an impact.
“Toney turned his back on him,” Jordet says. “That was brilliant. Krul has a cascade of mind games. He wants to argue about the placement of the ball on the spot and he’s trying to talk to him. Toney even indicated that the referee needed to take care of this guy. It was a textbook way to deal with it and I think other penalty takers will start doing similar things.”
Toney scored 10 penalties in a row in the Premier League for Brentford until they faced his former side Newcastle United in April 2023. Brentford were awarded a penalty after Sven Botman wiped out Kevin Schade. The referee Chris Kavanagh pointed to the spot immediately but two minutes passed until Toney stepped up.
The delay was partially caused by Schade requiring treatment while Newcastle ramped up their distraction techniques. Nick Pope seizes the ball and, at one stage, tosses it to Bruno Guimaraes before Mathias Jensen steals it back. Pope is off his line and ready to annoy Toney but the striker is waiting patiently outside the box offscreen.
When he is ready, he strolls into the area and takes the ball from Jensen.
He exchanges a few brief words with Kavanagh.
After the referee blows his whistle, Toney prepares to strike the ball but a gust of wind nudges it slightly out of position.
Toney makes contact but his shot is weak.
Pope dives in the right direction and clings onto the ball. It was a rare failure from 12 yards out.
“The way I take my penalties, I don’t look at the ball,” Toney said. “So, I’m looking at the keeper and, in my peripheral vision, I can see the ball has moved off the spot. The referee had already blown his whistle and I didn’t know the rules, I didn’t know if I could move it again; I found out after that I could.”
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“Maybe it’s good he missed in a game where the stakes were not as high,” Lyttleton says. “If that had happened against Switzerland he would have redone the whole process again.”
Brentford were awarded another penalty in first-half stoppage time against Newcastle and Toney did not back down from the challenge.
He adopts the same approach.
Pope dives in the same direction.
But this time the ball hits the back of the net, just above Pope’s right hand.
“One thing I have noticed he does, that other goalkeeper dependent strikers don’t do, is hit the ball high,” Lyttleton says. “That is an even harder skill when you are waiting until the last minute. It is a sign of confidence and utter conviction that his method is the best way. You can hit the ball high over the bar but you can’t hit the ball low and miss. Your margin of error is increased but this is something else he has in his locker.”
England’s approach to their penalty shootout against Switzerland was detailed and thoroughly researched. Jordan Pickford had a sheet of paper stuck to his water bottle that outlined where each of the Swiss players tend to shoot. Southgate implemented a buddy system which meant that one player would be assigned to one of the takers to support and congratulate them. Toney has become close friends with Declan Rice during the tournament and they were paired together. Southgate strategically placed Toney fourth on the list of takers too.
“The two penalties that are the most important in a shootout are No 1 and No 4,” Lyttleton says. “No 4 has the lowest conversion rate in the Euros. The team who go second, their fourth penalty, which is eighth overall, drops to 55 per cent. The pressure increases hugely. It was no surprise to me that Palmer and Toney were first and fourth. Southgate put all his faith in Toney and rightly so.”
(Header photo: Crystal Pix/MB Media/Getty Images)
