aThe UEFA European Under-21 Championship reaches the knockout stage and as Friday’s England-Sweden and Italy-Germany semi-finals come into view, so too does the possibility of the tournament’s first penalty shoot-out. For some, that spectre will be particularly grim: not only did Stuart Pearce’s England lose a semi-final 13-12 on penalties to the Netherlands in the last U21 tournament two years ago; Pearce the player suffered a similar fate in the last four of both the 1990 FIFA World Cup and EURO ‘96™. With such a dreaded lottery only 120 minutes away, uefa.com canvassed the opinion of the four semi-finalist coaches on the potential for do-or-die drama in Gothenburg and Helsingborg.

There’s no guarantees when you come to a shoot-out. I’ve gone out of three major tournaments on penalties, so to not make my team acutely aware of the implications of a possible shoot-out would be folly. We’ve practised for two years and as soon as this tournament finishes, the next group will be practising them. We like to think we do things reasonably thoroughly at this level. We’ve analysed which direction the players take their penalties, the most successful way they take them, goalkeepers’ technique saving them, and have fed that information back to the players. I’ll know my 1-23 penalty takers exactly.
Stuart Pearce, England

If Stuart Pearce has been practising penalties at every training session for the last two years, I would say it is a waste of time. No one knows if a game will go to penalties. I would say a penalty shoot-out is 90 per cent mental and ten per cent skill. And mentally you can’t really prepare. Penalties might play a big part in a game, but if you compare them with a thousand other things that can affect the outcome of a game – things we also need to practise – I would say practising penalties is a waste of time. I prefer to focus on the things that can make us win the game before a penalty shoot-out, and I hope we do that on Friday. But I can understand the English with their history of going out on penalties.
Jörgen Lennartsson, Sweden coach

It could go to penalties, and if it does there is not much we can do about it. We always practise penalties in training, not just ahead of this game. Most of the players take penalties at the end of every training session, so we don’t need to do anything special this time around – and that is not because I am superstitious like my players.
Pierluigi Casiraghi, Italy coach

We don’t need to practise penalties in particular. We have enough players capable of scoring penalties and they have shown that often enough in the Bundesliga. Anyway, I’m convinced the game will be decided in 90 minutes.
Horst Hrubesch, Germany coach