In South Africa, even Germany misses a penalty

PORT ELIZABETH - The English striker Gary Lineker is famous for scoring lots of goals and making one unforgettable comment: “Soccer is a game for 22 people that run around, play the ball … and in the end Germany always wins.”

It may be time to update that truism after Lukas Podolski missed a penalty Friday that would have enabled 10-man Germany to pull even with Serbia in a crucial Group D match in South Africa.

Man of the Match, Slovakia keeper Vladimir Stojkovic, guessed the right way, diving to his left to paw out Podolski’s spot kick and become a hero to the Serbian people.

Podolski, who had earlier missed several good opportunities to pull his side level, had no explanation for the miss. “It wasn’t poorly taken, but he guessed the right corner,” he said. “It’s disappointing but I accept responsibility for it.”

The last penalty miss during regular time by a German national player was so long ago that no-one among the hundreds of German journalists could remember when it was.

It needed some frantic calls to the archives to come up with the answer: Uli Hoeness’ miss against Poland in 1974.

Since then the German team have been knocking them in with the regularity of country’s legendary railways. The only two misses since them came in shoot-outs when Hoeness missed in the final loss to Czechoslovakia in the European Championships in 1976 and Uli Steilike missed in the World Cup semi-final against France in 1986. Even then Germany went on to the game.

Germany famously beat England on penalties at Italia 90 and Euro 96 without missing a kick, and beat Argentina in 2006 on penalties to advance to the semi-finals.