This is a ball-knowing newsletter. Let’s look at some recent claims made in this space:
The 48-team World Cup is good, actually: 100 percent true. Tripling down on this. The Round of 32, which didn’t used to exist, has been filled with thrillers. It feels like we’ve already had more upsets through seven knockout games than during the 2025 and 2026 NCAA men’s basketball tournaments combined.
Africa is having its best World Cup ever: Morocco beat the Netherlands in the Round of 32 for just the sixth all-time win for an African nation in the knockout stages of the World Cup. With six African nations still to play their Round of 32 games, I’m expecting even more.
Penalty kick takers should try kicking the ball at the net instead of blasting it into the upper deck and posing a threat to migrating birds: Again, true. But let’s talk more about that.
– Rodger Sherman
Today’s Lineup
Why the best teams in the world are so, so bad at penalty shootouts
Shoutout to the overlooked players making huge impacts for their teams
LeBron is on the move, and I have many questions
😱 Pain in the PKs 😱
Germany’s World Cup hopes died when their captain, Joshua Kimmich, tried and failed to get his teammates to step up and take a sudden death penalty kick. Paraguay and Germany were tied after 120 minutes of play and through the first 10 kicks of the penalty shootout, forcing sudden death kicks. The Germans had not planned for this, and the Germans normally love planning.
Video shows Kimmich essentially begging his most capable teammates who had yet to take a shot to step up. None wanted the responsibility. So Jonathan Tah, the team’s 6-foot-5 center back, walked to the spot for a kick he never should’ve taken.
Tah is a defender. He has had one goal — a header — in 51 caps for Germany, and had never taken a penalty shot in any game for any team at any level. I think the commentator here understates how much the kick missed the net.
If you’re a soccer casual who tunes in for the World Cup every four years — maybe you even watch the Champions League or the Euros! — you probably think penalty shootouts are a common part of soccer. I’ve seen a lot of social media users express surprise that so many inexperienced shooters are taking such momentous shots.
But there’s a reason that team after team keeps sending in inexperienced shooters for these massive moments: Penalty shootouts basically never happen, and everybody is just kinda guessing at what to do.
It’s funny. Penalty shootouts take place in hockey, too, but they only in regular season games, when whatever who cares. When the stakes are highest, NHL teams will play an infinite number of overtimes if necessary to ensure that a giant game gets a gimmick-less ending.
Soccer does literally the opposite. For the vast majority of games, a draw is an acceptable outcome. But in the biggest games in the world — the ones watched by billions, rather than millions — the sports use a strange mini-game that is full of psychology and guesswork. Think about how much effort goes into analyzing soccer, and then, with the whole world watching, you’ve just got a guy asking his teammate “any of you guys wanna take a shot?”
Tah was not the only participant with little-to-no penalty-taking experience. The player who took the winning penalty for Paraguay, José Canale, was also a center-back with zero career penalty attempts, per Transfermarkt. In fact, three of Paraguay’s six shooters are listed as having no career penalty attempts. Theirs just went in the net.
In the Netherlands-Morocco game, Morocco went with a shooter with zero career penalty attempts, a shooter with one career penalty attempt, and a shooter who was 0-for-2 in his career. Two of them scored! (The third guy is now 0-for-3 … maybe skip him next time.)
Many have criticized Leon Goretzka, a midfielder with more goal-scoring talent and experience than Tah, for turning down the opportunity to shoot. But Goretzka himself has only attempted five penalties, missing two, and none since 2018. Germany had no good options.
In the Champions League final between Arsenal and PSG, Arsenal also had to turn to a center back with zero career penalty attempts: Gabriel Magalhães, who stepped up for the decisive fifth penalty and missed.
This situation keeps happening for two reasons. First, when penalty kicks occur in a game due to a foul, teams typically have one or two shooters they trust to shoot them. Consider Bayern Munich, the all-world German club team that supplies many of the German national team’s players. They won 21 penalties in open play during the 2025-26 season, and Harry Kane took 20 of them.
In penalty shootouts, you need five shooters. That’s half of the guys on the field for each team, if we exclude the goalie! (Although some goalies do really like taking penalties.) By the time you get to shooter #5 — or in Germany’s case, #6 — you’re going to be choosing from players who aren’t necessarily great goal scorers.
And teams don’t give those players many reps in penalty shootouts because, well, there just aren’t a lot of penalty shootouts. The vast majority of soccer games do not have the potential to end in penalty shootouts! They’re regular season games that will end in draws if they are tied when the ref’s whistle blows. You only go to PKs in tournament knockout matches, and that’s a relatively small percentage of the games that teams play each year. Even at the World Cup, 72 of the 104 total games were group stage matches that couldn’t end in PKs.
Back to Bayern Munich: They played 55 matches this year and 36 of those were Bundesliga games. Eight more were in the group stages of the Champions League, and three more were first legs of Champions League home-and-home matches. So 47 of their 55 matches this year (85 percent) simply could not go to penalty kicks. None of the other eight did: In fact, Bayern hasn’t been in a penalty shootout since January 2021.
There was only one shootout in the Champions League during the 2025-26 season, and it came in the final. There were only two in the Europa League, and none in the UEFA Conference League. Only six of the 18 teams in Germany’s Bundesliga in the 2025-26 season participated in a penalty shootout in any competition — all in the domestic cup, the DFB-Pokal.
And while international matches do go to penalty kicks, Germany hadn’t been in one since 2016. Only one player from that shootout is still on the team — Kimmich, the captain.
In-game penalties are much more successful and accurate than shootout penalties. That’s holding up at the World Cup. Five of 22 shootout attempts have missed the net entirely — about 23 percent. That’s a massive number, four times higher than the 4.9 percent of in-game penalties that miss the net entirely.
But the sample sizes here are so small! It has been common knowledge that you want to shoot first in penalty shootouts, which puts pressure on your opponents to make do-or-die kicks. The team that shot first won 15 of the first 24 shootouts in World Cup history — a huge advantage. However, the team shooting second has now won 11 of the last 13 penalty shootouts at the World Cup. What do we make of that?
Watching the Netherlands-Morocco shootout, it looked like Moroccan keeper Bono discovered a new strategy. While most keepers dive to one side of the net during penalty kicks (committing pre-kick because there’s not enough time to actually react to the shot, a strategy that helped Bono pitch a rare shootout shutout against Spain in the 2022 World Cup), Bono picked a side but remained standing. Diving leaves goalies with little recourse to adjust if they wind up in the wrong spot, whereas Bono was able to use his reflexes to save a high shot towards the middle of the net.
Amazingly, Bono used the same tactic for a critical save in the Africa Cup of Nations semifinals against Nigeria in January.
What actually works in penalties? Has Bono uncovered something? If an opposing player has one career attempt and it’s to the left, should the goalie dive left? Are the stutter-steppers onto something? Should shooters try going down the middle and hoping the goalkeeper dives? Should teams save a sub for a penalty specialist — either a goalie or a shooter — in the 120th minute?
There’s only one answer: Shoot the ball at the goal. It’s the only thing that works.
🇵🇾 Paraguay 1 🇵🇾
🇩🇪 Germany 1 🇩🇪
🇵🇾 Paraguay wins on penalties 🇵🇾
A lot of words about this game already, but I wanted to give a shoutout to two Paraguayans who thrived out of nowhere.
The first is goalkeeper Orlando Gill, who made multiple saves in the shootout despite struggling to make a pro team until recently. He only had three career senior club appearances through 2024, and at one point he sold a uniform he’d received on a junior national team to help pay the bills after his child was born prematurely.
The second is Canale, the final penalty scorer. He had never started a game for Paraguay before, and was only playing due to an injury to starting center back Omar Alderete.
One last note: it looks like we may have some push back on Meat Wall tactics. Germany’s go-ahead goal was wiped off the board because Gill ran into a German player who was essentially setting a pick for Tah.
🇲🇦 Morocco 1 🇲🇦
🇳🇱 Netherlands 1 🇳🇱
🇲🇦 Morocco wins on penalties 🇲🇦
Something incredible about this Morocco team? It’s mostly made up of different players from the 2022 team that went on that semifinals run! Only nine of the 26 players on this roster played in the 2022 World Cup, and only three of them were in the starting 11 on Monday. Long story short: They’ve actually got the second-youngest average age in the entire World Cup.
🇫🇷 France 3 🇫🇷🇫🇷🇫🇷
🇸🇪 Sweden 0
Oh, crap, France is going to win the World Cup.
🇳🇴 Norway 2 🇳🇴🇳🇴
🇨🇮 Cote D’Ivoire 1 🇨🇮
Erling Haaland scored the game-winner on one of the least impressive goals of his career: a mishit ball that trickled into an open net.
🇲🇽 Mexico 2 🇲🇽🇲🇽
🇪🇨 Ecuador 0
I’m sorry, I underestimated the home-field advantage posed by the Azteca. El Tri has one more game in Mexico City, whose altitude and attitude are both powerful enough to leave opponents in tears. Also, we got another red card for covering mouth.
🇧🇷 Brazil 2 🇧🇷🇧🇷
🇯🇵 Japan 1 🇯🇵
Japan took an early lead and then went into a shell. Brazil won on the latest game-winning goal — in the 95th minute! — in the history of the knockout rounds by Gabriel Martinelli.
🚚👑📦 A King on the Move … 🚚👑📦
LeBron James announced that he is leaving the Lakers and will play for a fourth NBA team (or maybe go back to his first NBA team?) There are so many questions: At 41 years old and with the all-time NBA scoring record, how much longer does he intend to play? Is he trying to be a team’s #1 option again, or will he take a backseat like he did to Luka Doncic (and even Austin Reaves) on the Lakers? Did he really wait until after Bronny’s contract with the Lakers was guaranteed before leaving?
It looks like he may join Steph Curry and Draymond Green with the Golden State Warriors … a.k.a. the Olden State Warriors.
🎾 … And a Queen in England 🎾
Forty-four-year-old Serena Williams won a set at Wimbledon in her first singles match in four years, but eventually lost to 20-year-old Michigan native Maya Joint, who was born after Serena’s first seven Grand Slam championships. Serena still has a doubles match to play with Venus on Thursday.
🏆🏆 The double-double? 🏆🏆
The Liberty beat the Aces in the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup, with Sabrina Ionescu and Breanna Stewart combining for 51 points. The Liberty are hoping to be the first team since 2022 to win the Cup and the WNBA Finals in the same year. If they did, New York would be the first city ever to have the NBA Cup champions, the NBA Finals champions, the WNBA Commissioner’s Cup champions, and the WNBA Finals champions at the same time. Where are we going to store all the trophies; our apartments are already so cramped!
On Deck is written by Bradley Locker.
🌍⚽🏆 World Cup! 🏆⚽🌍
🏴 England 🏴 vs. 🇨🇩 Congo DR 🇨🇩
Wednesday, 12 p.m. ET in Atlanta
Seeking its first World Cup title since 1966, England looked great in their first match against Croatia and unimpressive ever since. Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo looks to continue a string of upsets. The winner gets Mexico in the Azteca, which will be a scary thought for the winner.
🇧🇪 Belgium 🇧🇪 vs. 🇸🇳 Senegal 🇸🇳
Wednesday, 4 p.m. ET in Seattle
After playing in arguably the tournament’s toughest group, Senegal is battle-tested for this one. Both teams scored five goals in their group stage finales, but Senegal might have a tough time stopping Belgium with starting goalkeeper Édouard Mendy out with a knee injury.
🇺🇸 United States 🇺🇸 vs. 🇧🇦 Bosnia-Herzegovina 🇧🇦
Wednesday, 8 p.m. ET in Santa Clara
Now receiving superteam allegations after dismantling the Paraguay squad that upset Germany, the U.S. is eyeing its second straight Round of 16 appearance. The Americans will have to corral 21-year-old phenom Ermin Mahmić, who has two goals in two games.
🇪🇸 Spain 🇪🇸 vs. 🇦🇹 Austria 🇦🇹
Thursday, 3 p.m. ET in Inglewood
Austria’s reward for its miraculous Round of 32 qualification? The juggernaut Spanish. Even getting this far is something to celebrate for Austria, who haven’t won a World Cup knockout match since a run to the semis in 1954.
🇵🇹 Portugal 🇵🇹 vs. 🇭🇷 Croatia 🇭🇷
Thursday, 7 p.m. ET in Toronto
This World Cup has been a showcase for superstars … except if you’re Cristiano Ronaldo and Portugal. They’ll look to rewrite the narrative against a slept-on Croatia squad that has surrendered just one goal in its last two matches.
🇨🇭 Switzerland 🇨🇭 vs. 🇩🇿 Algeria 🇩🇿
Thursday, 11 p.m. ET in Vancouver
A late kickoff for the final Round of 32 game in this window might be a harbinger for some more after-dark chaos. The Swiss are comfortable in this venue, beating Canada in Vancouver in their final group stage game.
⚾ MLB ⚾
Pirates vs. Phillies
Wednesday at 6:40 p.m. ET
Paul Skenes faces off against Zack Wheeler in a pitching matchup between one of the game’s best of the last decade, and one who’s right in that conversation for the next 10 years. Although the NL East looked like a foregone conclusion, the red-hot Phillies are only 2.5 games back of the Braves for first place. Skenes has been a little more hittable this year, but his career-worst ERA is still 3.10. Not too shabby.
Reds vs. Brewers
Thursday at 2:10 p.m. ET
Get your radar guns ready for this one. We’ll see plenty of high heat as Jacob Misiorowski faces off with Chase Burns, two youngsters who have turned into frontline starters and legitimate NL Cy Young contenders. If American Family Field decides to manually hang up Ks in the stands, it probably won’t have enough room.
Thank you for reading and for your support!
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