Ivan Toney, Cole Palmer and why England need penalty specialists at Euro 2024

Gareth Southgate has a host of dilemmas to solve before picking England’s Euro 2024 squad, and there will no doubt be countless tense conversations with assistant Steve Holland over the next few weeks about left-backs and No 6s and the existential necessity of Jordan Henderson.

Chief among them is the question of which striker to take alongside Harry Kane. Given that squads have shrunk back down to 23 players from 26 at the past two tournaments, Southgate will likely pick only two out-and-out No 9s. Callum Wilson was once in the picture but has faded with injuries. Dominic Solanke has made a charge but it is too late. The battle to join Kane at the Euros is between Ollie Watkins and Ivan Toney.

They match up pretty evenly. On form, Watkins has the edge with a flood of goals and assists since Unai Emery took charge of Aston Villa. Toney returned from his betting ban in January with a few goals but is not as prolific, though that is perhaps understandable playing for Brentford rather than Villa. Watkins has a little more international experience, having made 11 caps and scored three goals; Toney has one goal in two appearances.

Then there is their profile: does Southgate want an alternative to Kane, someone who can run the channels and threaten with pace on the counterattack like Watkins? Or does he want an understudy, a focal point who could mimic Kane’s role like Toney? Toney’s physicality with his back to goal might be a better fit for Phil Foden, Bukayo Saka and Jude Bellingham.

So far, so close. But the one skill in which there is no argument is penalty taking.

Toney has been described as the best penalty taker in the world by his manager, Thomas Frank, and although Frank is biased, he has a point. Toney’s approach feels almost infallible, as he stands over the ball and stares down the goalkeeper in a game of chicken. It is a game he almost always wins.

The stats bear out Frank’s claim: Toney has taken 32 career penalties and scored 30 of those for a conversion rate of 94 per cent. For context, the Premier League average hovers around 78 per cent, as does Lionel Messi; Cristiano Ronaldo converts 85 per cent of his penalties; Harry Kane scores 86 per cent.

By contrast, only 70 per cent of penalties are scored in major shootouts. That is in part down to the pressure of the situation, and because the takers tend not to be specialists bar one or two on each team. The value of a master-taker is high.

There is a wider question here: should penalties really be a factor in deciding a tournament squad? Well, perhaps more so than ever before. The format of the modern 24-team Euros is something of an asymmetrical mess, and it means the group stage is relatively easy to get through: the quality is diluted, opponents are weaker and teams can finish third in the group and still progress. For the strongest nations, it renders the Euros a de facto knockout tournament.

England are highly likely to pass through the group. With that in mind, winning the four knockout matches becomes the overriding mission, and this is the crucial point – if England are going to win the Euros, statistically they will have to win at least one penalty shootout. Every winner has played a shootout since Greece in 2004. The reigning European champions, Italy, and the World Cup winners, Argentina, both won two games on penalties.

As talented as this England squad are, they are unlikely to blow away everyone in their path this summer, and so stacking the deck in their favour for the eventuality of a shootout seems like a smart approach. Chelsea’s Cole Palmer is another who has honed his technique, with a perfect record of nine from nine so far in his career. Palmer is also being weighed up in Southgate’s mind over the coming weeks.

There is conflicting evidence about just how effective it is to throw on shootout specialists late in extra time. Southgate memorably brought on Marcus Rashford and Jadon Sancho to take penalties against Italy in the Euro 2020 final, and both missed their kicks. That came only a few weeks after the Europa League final in which both Manchester United and Sevilla brought on players specifically to take penalties – Juan Mata, Alex Telles and Dani Raba – and all three scored. Perhaps the most famous example of shootout engineering was Louis van Gaal’s call to throw on Netherlands’ goalkeeper Tim Krul at the 2014 World Cup: he saved two Costa Rican penalties to win the quarter-final. Van Gaal ran out of subs in the semi-final, couldn’t bring on Krul, and they lost a shootout to Argentina.

There is no guarantee Toney or Palmer would score, but they would bring threat off the bench and they are experts from the spot, and England don’t have many of those. Southgate only has 23 players to select so there is little room for risk with his choices, but in the clostest calls, penalties should be in the conversation. Because the reality is that if England are going to win Euro 2024, they are probably going to have to beat at least one opponent from 12 yards.