Antonin Panenka: ‘I wasn’t 100% confident I was going to score, I was 1,000%’
COLORSPORT/SHUTTERSTOCK Antonin Panenka scores past Sepp Maier on 20 June 1976 It is 50 years ago today that Antonin Panenka ’s spot-kick in Belgrade changed his life and the art of penalty-taking ‘I have seen it described as the ‘falling leaf ’ penalty and I like that, it works so beautifully’ ‘Nobody had done it before and nobody would ever think I would do it, especially in a final’ 20 Jun 2026 - THE GUARDIAN / Sport Gavin Newsham Antonin Panenka laughs like a bear might, a low rumble, suggesting mischief among the memories. He is sat in an office at Bohemians football club in Prague, recounting the story of his impudent, revolutionary penalty that not only won the 1976 European Championship for Czechoslovakia against West Germany but soured his relationship with the goalkeeper his spot-kick humiliated, Sepp Maier . “He went 35 years without uttering a single word to me,” he smiles. But the feud went much deeper. “I read some articles that he even had a shoot...