Captain wrote:

I'm just going to point out that Bergkamp gave up taking penalties after his miss against ManU in their treble season. There's a bloke with balls and technique to spare and he said "fuck it, I'm never taking a penalty again".

You boys need to play more football or something.

Bergkamp is my favourite player of all time but to say he had balls is a bit of a stretch.

Not taking penalties because (boo-hoo) you missed one is pathetic. Since you also play football you'll know that converting penalties is piss easy and if you fail you know exactly what you did wrong.

I've never seen a Brazilian or German player pussy out of taking a pen. Even Denilson scored one for us. Oo the pressure

Footballers in general are very weak mentally because it's not an individual sport. Faced with the situation where they can't hide in the pack, a lot of them collapse.

Okay, I stretched the point on purpose because I knew (thought) nobody would question it.

he did take penalties after that tho, didn't he?

His one against United was slightly different though wasn't it? Granted it wasn't a great penalty - it was close enough to the keeper and at a height that it was a fairly straightforward save - but if the keeper went low or the other way or dived late, it was in and we were in the final. He at least gave himself a chance but unfortunately Schmeichel saved it. To miss the goal completely by the distance Gervinho did is unforgivable at that level really.

Heh. Baggio did the same.

And he was never quite forgiven for it, either.

Just seen Gervinho's penalty. God its so bad. Missed by a mile there.

Not as bad as Toure's penalty. After such a tremendous build up...

Jonathan Wilson, of Inverting the Pyramid fame, reckons Gervinho was just about the biggest dissapointment in the competition. Says he was woeful, one quality goal aside.

I didn't watch most of the games but I thought Gervinho was pretty good in the final. Well, the embarrassing penalty aside anyway.