Spain crashed out of the World Cup on penalties last night, despite dominating possession against Morocco for two solid hours. Pretty much everyone bar Spaniards will be delighted by this giant-killing by Morocco, who are just the fourth African team to reach the quarter-finals in football history.
But their penalty success is nothing to celebrate. Much as it would be great to see less-fancied nations do well at the World Cup, it would be better if this was achieved by scoring more goals, rather than parking the bus and running down the clock.
Spain were the better team last night. While it’s fun for footballing giants to lose now and again, penalty shoot-outs are not good for the game. This may be due to the psychological burden of having established your superiority over your opponents in normal time, but then having to reconfigure your thinking for a one-off crap shoot from the penalty spot.
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