To celebrate 35 years of the Panenka penalty, Mexio’s Sport Centre made a video highlighting the top 10 Panenka penalties ever. The Panenka penalty is the one where you chip it down the middle and look really cool because the keeper has dived the wrong way and if he had just stayed there and stood up he would have saved it. People look so cool when they do the Panenka penalty. Unless they screw it up, then they just look like idiots. It’s like they say – there’s a fine line between idiocy and genius and I guess the Panenka penalty perfectly sums that up.

Despite seeing a few of them in my time, I never realised that the correct name for the technique was the Panenka penalty. I would just say something like ‘the chip down the middle’ or something dumb like that. Real lads

Anyway, it’s called the Panenka penalty because the first person to ever perform a Panenka penalty was called Antonin Panenka. He played for the Czechoslovakia (remember that country?) back in the 1976 European championships. Czechoslovakia got to the final and had to play West Germany (remember that country too?). The final went to penalties and the deciding penalty was to be taken by Antonin Panenka.

Remember, this was the final penalty to win the European Championships and nobody had ever performed a Panenka penalty before. Under the most intense pressure ever, Antonin Panenka performed the first ever Panenka penalty and Czechoslovakia had won the European Championships. Not only did he win the European championship that day but Antonin Panenka also gave birth to the Panenka penalty. What a hero.

You can check out Mexico Sport Centre’s top 10 Panenka penalties in the video below. All the ones you expect would be there and some other Panenka penalties you might not have seen. You also get to see the original Panenka penalty as well:

Top ten goals as Panenka by martelis