Euro Icons - 1976: Antonin Panenka, a true original who created an extra entry in football's lexicon

Not much is new. All those films and books you love, however much the plot twist knocks you sideways, have an echo of tales from classical mythology; whatever musical genre is your bag is probably derivative, either directly or indirectly, of the blues roots from the Mississippi delta. New Labour? That was just the old party bludgeoned through the woodchipper of a marketing think tank.

The same is true in football. What we regard as innovation on the pitch is rarely the maiden voyage, and this particularly applies to skills copyrighted to individual players. When Johan Cruyff sent Jan Olsson on the metro back into Dortmund with a deft change of direction at the 1974 World Cup it was quickly christened the Cruyff turn, yet grainy footage of Garrincha pulling off the same manoeuvre in Brazil over a decade before exists. Zinedine Zidane’s la Roulette, that spinning slalom between defenders by quickly dragging the ball under the studs of one boot and then the other, has at least one historical forefather. Diego Maradona pulled this off against England at the 1986 World Cup, although it was understandably overshadowed by several other things he did that afternoon.

There is one man however that slapped down a patent on a piece of skill 44 years ago that would survive any challenge to its originality. And, best of all, it was executed with the last kick of the 1976 European Championship final...

Antonín Panenka was a late bloomer in international football. His first appearance for Czechoslovakia came in 1973, just ten weeks before his 25th birthday, after years of yo-yoing between the first and second divisions in Czechoslovakia with his club Bohemians Praha. By the time the qualifying for the 1976 European Championship had started, Panenka was fully immersed in the team. He was a technical and creative attacking midfielder, who took his art seriously and literally. "My football motto was, 'Play for joy and the entertainment of the fans and yourself.’" he told Karel Haring in The Blizzard. "I wanted them to talk about my actions and my goals in pubs and other places."

With his pudding bowl haircut, luscious moustache and laid-back elegance, Panenka was a prototype Velvet revolutionary. What he lacked in defensive abilities he made up for in goalscoring, with a strike rate of around one every three games throughout his club career. This was aided by a penchant for set-pieces; Panenka took control of free-kicks and penalties for Bohemians Praha and later for the national side. With the latter he would achieve immortality.

Up until the seventies, Czechoslovakia had been in touching distance of it. They had lost the quarter-final of the World Cup in 1938, the final in 1962 and finished third in the inaugural European Championship of 1960. When Panenka joined the team there was some serious talent in the Czech squad. Ivo Viktor, despite almost being lobbed by Pelé from the opposite half in the 1970 World Cup, was an excellent goalkeeper. The captain Anton Ondruš was one of the best defenders of his generation, and the team possessed two lethal attacking weapons in their rapid winger Marián Masný and centre forward Zdeněk Nehoda.

Even with that talent, qualifying for a 16-team World Cup or a four-team European Championship finals was fiendishly difficult in that era. Czechoslovakia had not been to one since Viktor had almost been embarrassed by Pelé in Mexico. In the qualifiers for the 1976 European Championship they drew a group containing Cyprus, Portugal and England, where only the winners would advance.

They were thumped 3-0 by Don Revie’s new-look England at Wembley in the opening game of the group but recovered quickly as England began to slip up elsewhere. Panenka bagged a hat-trick as Czechoslovakia thumped Cyprus in Prague, ahead of the return fixture with England in Bratislava in November 1975. In a game initially abandoned due to fog and replayed the following day, an inspired display from Masný gave Czechoslovakia a 2-1 victory in a group they would eventually win by a single point. In the two-legged quarter-finals in the Spring of 1976 Panenka drilled in a free-kick as Czechoslovakia beat the USSR – former champions and runners-up four years earlier – 4-2 on aggregate to reach the finals.

When the draw for the tournament was made it appeared that Czechoslovakia were merely a gateway to settling a row from two years earlier. The hosts, Yugoslavia, were drawn against world champions West Germany in one semi-final in Belgrade; Czechoslovakia had to face the runners-up from the 1974 World Cup, the Netherlands, in Zagreb in the other. The short money was on Franz Beckenbauer and Johann Cruyff taking their teams to a rematch in the final. Instead, Europe got a mini-classic it could scarcely have bargained for; all four matches went to extra-time, nineteen goals were scored and there was a bucketload of controversy and drama. Pound for pound, it might be the greatest international tournament ever. It was certainly the most ‘Cold War’ of all European Championships – two teams from the East faced two from the West, all tucked away in Tito’s socialist republic down on the Mediterranean.

Czechoslovakia’s semi-final was contested in a torrential downpour. The exploding clouds were a fitting backdrop to a clash of monumental egos, specifically those of the more prominent characters in the Dutch squad and the Welsh referee Clive Thomas. It was a display of officiating that still rankles in the Netherlands. In his one and only European Championship appearance Cruyff was booked for backchat in the second half, a caution that when coupled with one in the qualifiers meant that he would miss a potential final.

Panenka crossed a free kick for Ondruš to head Czechoslovakia ahead in the first half. Ondruš then levelled up the score when he sliced comically into his own net early in the second. The game was a roughhouse classic in atrocious conditions and deteriorated quickly. Jaroslav Pollák and Johan Neeskens were sent off to reduce the game to 10-a-side going into extra-time. When Panenka clattered Cruyff with an obvious foul six minutes from the end, Thomas waved play on and Nehoda soon nodded in at the back post. Willem van Hanegem was so incensed that he refused to kick off again, and Thomas sent him off too.

With nine knackered players the Netherlands’ Total Football became a total shambles. Panenka slid Jozef Móder through in the dying minutes to make it 3-1, and Czechoslovakia were through to the final. Thomas was unrepentant when he watched the game back more than three decades later. "My friend Johan," he noted of Cruyff when watching one of their exchanges on a video replay, "trying to tell me what the laws of the game are."

West Germany would face Czechoslovakia in the final, but only just. The world and European champions were in transition. Gunter Netzer, the iconic playmaker from the 1972 German team, Paul Breitner, Wolfgang Overath and Gerd Muller had all either retired or were in exile. It was the latter’s namesake, Dieter Muller, that yanked a desperate situation out of the fire against Yugoslavia in the semi-final. The hosts went 2-0 up before Heinz Flohe pulled one back for West Germany in the 64th minute. Muller entered the fray for his international debut after 79 minutes – he had only a late call-up to the squad due to injury – and equalised three minutes later. With another two goals in the last five minutes of extra-time his hat-trick put the champions in the final again. It was a crushing defeat for the hosts, who also lost the third and fourth place play-off after extra-time, going under 3-2 to the Netherlands two days later.

With two weary sets of players about to contest the final, the prospect of a replay in the event of a stalemate after 120 minutes was in no one’s interests. Just a few hours before kick-off, Uefa and the West German and Czechoslovakian FAs agreed to settle the match with a penalty competition if the game was level after extra-time. This fledgling solution to resolving tied games had been in response to an underwhelming end to the 1968 European Championship in Italy, where not only did the hosts win the final against Yugoslavia with a replay but had advanced to that stage by eliminating the USSR on the toss of a coin in the semi-finals.

Initially it looked like the penalty competition would not be required. Czechoslovakia were two up inside 25 minutes with goals from Ján Švehlík and Karol Dobiaš. Almost straight from the kick-off after the second goal, Masný then went through one on one with Sepp Maier and poked his finish agonisingly wide of the post. Inevitably, the miss was costly. As the old football maxim goes, two-nil is a dangerous lead; against West Germany, its often fatal. Muller scored with a smart volley a few minutes later, and in the very last minute of normal time Bernd Holzenbein rose above Viktor to head in the equaliser from a corner.

There were no more goals in extra-time, and it finished 2-2. While the German players had been told about a potential penalty competition the Czechoslovakian players were unaware, and initially left the pitch before being hurried back on minutes later. Although that was embarrassing, in practical terms they were the better prepared team; after one friendly before the tournament, their coach Václav Ježek arranged for a penalty competition at full-time and asked the local crowd to try and put his players off. The Germans, for the one and only time in their history, were not ready for it.

"Penalties were never really my strong point," said Maier. "I’ve only saved penalties when they’ve had no real importance. We hadn’t decided beforehand who should take our penalties, so we weren’t really prepared. In the end five were picked, but everyone was really nervous about it." There was such a shortage of volunteers that Maier offered his services. Eventually Beckenbauer sorted everything out and insisted on the senior outfield players taking the responsibility, no matter what state they were in. "I still remember it clearly," Uli Hoeness reflected. "I didn’t want to take a penalty actually because I felt really tired. We’d already twice played extra-time, in the semi-final and the final, and I was completely exhausted, and badly injured too. But Beckenbauer come up to me and said 'Uli, you have to take a penalty. If you don’t do it, the young ones will have to do it.'"

If it was a novelty for the German players, it was a novelty for most of the world too. No major international tournament match had ever been settled by this method, and neither had any of the showpiece finals of the European club competitions. The first seven penalties were all successful and Czechoslovakia led 4-3, before Hoeness trudged forward to do his duty. His miss was spectacularly extravagant, clearing the crossbar by about a yard and landing out near the running track in the Red Star Stadium. With only one penalty left each, Panenka had the opportunity to win the tournament for Czechoslovakia. It was a moment that he had been practising and perfecting for two years.

After missing two penalties in one match for Bohemians against Plzeň in 1974, Panenka began to stay behind after training with goalkeeper Zdeněk Hruška to practice. They would bet beer and chocolates on the outcome, and initially Hruška was taking home most of the goodies. "I ended up lying awake at night thinking about how I could get the upper hand," Panenka said in an interview with the FWA in 2016. "I eventually realised that the goalkeeper always waited until just before the last moment to try to anticipate where the ball was going and dived just before it was kicked so he could reach the shot in time. I decided that it was probably easier to score by feinting to shoot and then just gently tapping the ball into the middle of the goal."

Neeskens had leathered a penalty down the middle to put the Netherlands 1-0 ahead in the opening minutes of the 1974 World Cup Final, but this was something different. Rather than a wallop that might give the goalkeeper a chance to produce a reflex save with his foot, Panenka’s wheeze required the most delicate application of skill and the nerve of a bomb-disposal expert. The strategy was high-risk, but with a high reward. It also put much more at stake than a mere goal. Any goalkeeper that bought it would still have time to look back at the centre of the goal and watch the ball drift serenely into the net, powerless and utterly humiliated. Conversely if it went wrong it was Panenka’s hubris that would take a battering, soon to be followed by an inevitable inquest from team-mates and coaches. To execute that penalty in a competitive area would require some serious stones.

After using the penalty to recover his beer and chocolate arrears from Hruška, Panenka started trying it in exhibitions and friendlies before debuting it in the Czechoslovakian league. His success rate was high, and he even put one past Viktor in a match against Dukla Prague a month before the European Championship. As these penalties were being dinked in behind the Iron Curtain no one on the broader international stage was aware of this innovation – certainly not Maier.

Prior to the final, Panenka told his roommate Viktor that he would deploy his invention against West Germany if the chance came up. Viktor begged him not to risk it, but Panenka’s belief was unshakeable. "I was one thousand per cent certain that I would take the penalty in that way," said Panenka, "and that I would score." With Czechoslovakia’s first major title on the line, and the equally unflappable Beckenbauer waiting to take the fifth German kick, Panenka ran forwards to the ball. He opened his body out to suggest that the ball would go in the right side of the goal, and Maier dived big in that direction; at the last split second, Panenka slowed down and dug his right foot beneath the ball like a sand wedge, chipping it into the centre area of the goal that Maier had just vacated. Czechoslovakia were European champions.

Panenka wheeled away to celebrate and, as per most penalty competitions since then, was subsumed in a pile-on by his team-mates. They had just secured their winning bonus of around £530 from the Czechoslovakian FA. Panenka was the poster boy for the triumph, both for his penalty and also for collecting his medal in his own shirt. All of the other players had swapped with the Germans and he hadn’t had time, leading to him being heralded back home as a true patriot. In West Germany, some of the reaction was sanguine. "Perhaps we have won more friends this way," said one Frankfurt newspaper, "as yet another victory may have brought the team close to being regarded as footballing superhumans."

Maier didn’t take it so graciously for some time. In his autobiography, with no foundation at all, he claimed that Panenka had broken the rules. While Maier sulked, Panenka’s reputation went international. Such audacity with the deciding kick of a major tournament final brought him global fame, and a reputation as a dead ball specialist that went before him. In the years that followed, opposition goalkeepers dared Panenka to repeat his effort whenever he was about to take a penalty against them, which turned his spot kicks into a game of heads up poker.

Panenka has since said that he feels like a prisoner of that penalty. "On one hand I am very proud of it and feel lucky that I scored it," he told Ben Lyttleton in Twelve Yards. "But then again, that one penalty has overshadowed my whole career: all my performances, my passes, my other goals." Late in his career, Panenka found a flush of success in Austria. Exploiting a rule in Czechoslovakian football where internationals could move abroad at 32 or after 50 caps, he left Bohemians Praha for Rapid Vienna. While there he won two Austrian league titles and three Austrian cups, and played as a substitute in the 1985 European Cup Winners Cup final against Everton. He is now back in the Czech Republic and club president of Bohemians.

The penalty technique that bears his name has since been used at major tournaments to crucial effect. Zinedine Zidane, in his curate’s egg of a World Cup final in 2006, stroked a Panenka in off the crossbar to put France in front. More recently, at the 2012 European Championship, Andrea Pirlo clipped one past a very overexcited Joe Hart in a quarter-final shootout between Italy and England. “I saw their goalkeeper doing all sorts on the line" Pirlo said afterwards. "So, I thought: OK, now I will give him the spoon.” In Italy, the technique is sometimes referred to as Il cucchiaio – the spoon – and it has a few other monikers in other languages. Though as with Hoover and Coke, one brand name is synonymous: that of its creator.

Panenka rarely used his invention again after its coming out party in Belgrade in 1976. France’s Dominique Dropsy was his last victim on the international stage, embarrassed a la Maier in a European Championship qualifier in Bratislava in 1979. Panenka took three more penalties at major tournaments – one against Italy in the shootout of the third and fourth place playoff of the 1980 European Championship, and one in each of the group games against Kuwait and France at the 1982 World Cup. On each occasion, he went for the left or right corners. One of the key elements of the Panenka penalty is surprise; after Belgrade, he was the only man on the planet who had ceded that advantage.