Penalty Shenanigans

For those who follow soccer, few would not remember who Martin Palermo is. He is the guy who missed three penalty kicks in a game in the 1999 Copa America, a record nonetheless.

But eight years before that, there was a game where three penalties were missed by the same team, and by three different players as well.

Yours Truly followed Italian Serie A very closely when he was young. He would stick in front of his TV AND tape-record the weekly Serie A highlight show on local TV stations. Martin Tyler's excellent commentary was one of the major reasons. His commentary for the feature match was excellent, and his work on the highlights of the rest of the matches was simply out of this world. While Yours Truly would be sad to have missed the feature match, he simply could not forgive himself if he somehow missed the post-feature match highlights.

On September 15, 1991, Inter beat Verona 2-0 at home, with Stefano Desideri scoring both goals, the second of which coming from the penalty spot. That score sheet looked perfectly normal, but the highlights showed otherwise.

Astonishingly, Inter were awarded FOUR penalties in the game, with two in each half. The first one was taken by none other than the great Lothar Matthäus, but Attilio Gregori, Verona's goalkeeper, dove to his right to parry the powerful effort away for a corner kick.

Not long afterwards, Inter were awarded a second penalty. Fellow German Andreas Brehme, who scored the winning penalty kick in the World Cup final just over a year before, saw his effort blocked by Gregori as well. Unfortunately though, Gregori made a hash of his follow-up clearance and Desideri was on hand to head in the rebound. So the game ended 1-0 to Inter at half-time.

The second half was eerily identical to the first, with two more penalties to the home side.

Penalty number three was taken by summer signing Massimo Ciocci, a promising striker from the relegated Cesena. But, put it simply, that was an AWFUL effort as he shanked it into the stands.

Incredibly, there was one more penalty to follow. And Desideri, who earlier scored on a fortuitous rebound, bravely decided to step up after his teammates' struggle. The ball hit the post but, with luck well and truly on his side, it still went in and gave him an unusual brace.

One more note: It was definitely not Gregori's day. Not only he had to face four penalty kicks, he actually went to the correct side on all four attempts and saved two of them. But that still did not prevent his side from losing the game, and relegation at the end of the season.