Euro 2012 11am Bulletin: Why the penalty shoot-out isn't a lottery at all

Irrespective of who you would like to see winning the tournament, it's fair to say that the semi-finalists are deserving of their place in the last four.

Portugal's win over the Czech Republic may have been by the single goal and they left it late to get it but they were by far the better team in that match and proved before that they were undoubtedly the second best team in a very tough group.

Spain and Germany both won their own quarter-finals comfortably; their progress was never really in doubt at any stage of their matches.

As for Italy, they may have needed the 'lottery' of penalties to make it through but I'm not really sure anyone can argue they weren't deserving of beating England. I'd go as far as saying it would have been a travesty if Italy hadn't gone through.

A word on the so-called lottery that is a shoot-out. If it is indeed a lottery you would be expected to win approximately 50% of the shoot-outs you have been involved in. England have now lost six from seven at major tournaments. Have we not now reached the point where we acknowledge that it's not really a lottery at all? That it's a skill like any other in football?

Let's look at another sport for a parallel example. In 2007 Andy Roddick won 18 tie-breaks in a row. A tie-break is probably the closest situation in tennis to a shoot-out. The odds should be roughly 50-50 in a tennis tie-break. One mini-break (winning a point on your opponent's serve) is often enough to clinch a tie-break. For sure, it's not exactly 50-50 because you'd expect the better player to have a better chance of winning a tie-break just as he does of winning each set or each match. But the fact Roddick won 18 in a row in 2007 is proof of the fact that for whatever reason, when it came down to it, he knew how to get over the line. Whether it was that he was the bigger server, handled the pressure better or had the confidence that he'd win it because he was so used to winning it, all played a part. But it's still an amazing record whichever way you look at it.

The problem England have is that there's no foolproof way of improving on this record. Goalkeepers can study footage of likely penalty-takers for the opposition for guidance on which way they might go. But that's not much use if someone else steps up who rarely takes a penalty meaning there isn't any footage to study. And you certainly can't legislate for Andrea Pirlo stepping up and chipping it down the middle!

And practising penalties yourself will only get you so far. A Brazilian journalist claims that in the last training session before Brazil played France at the 1986 World Cup he watched Zico score 100 in a row. When Zico had the chance to win the game for Brazil from the penalty spot with just a few minutes to go on the clock, he missed. He then scored in the subsequent shoot-out but it was all too little too late as France went through. Wouldn't England have been better off just going for it during extra-time?

But in addition to the four best teams being in the semis, it is also the four most positive teams who have progressed. Portugal's approach is a little unique in that their gameplan seems to revolve around 10 players trying to get the ball to Cristiano Ronaldo and asking him to make something happen. But let's not forget that when they beat Denmark 3-2 there were three different goalscorers and Ronaldo wasn't one of them. So at the very least we can say that other players were getting themselves into scoring positions even if it's Ronaldo generally doing most of the shooting.

And don't be fooled by Spain's formation, which is a sort of 4-6-0. They may not have played with an out-and-out forward in two of their games but just look at the positions all their midfielders get into. Xabi Alonso may be described as a holding midfielder but his first goal against France was from close to the penalty spot. They're not negative at all.

For the likes of Greece, England and to a lesser extent France, Euro 2012 was a lesson in how working hard and relying on set-pieces and chances to score on the break will only get you so far at this level.

The most positive team of all has been Germany, though. In terms of the players picked, the system used and the support provided by the full-backs (both Philipp Lahm and Lars Bender have scored at Euro 2012) they have been the ones who have most tried to win matches and win them convincingly. They may not win it but if football was fairer than life itself, they deserve to.