Perhaps we should have known from the start that this was going to take a while.
Panathinaikos' Argentine midfielder Daniel Mancini took the first penalty in the shootout against Ajax after the Greek side scored an equaliser late on in Thursday night's Europa League qualifier to send the game to penalties.
But while he technically “took” the penalty, the force with which he took it was such that he practically blew air on the ball. That pitiful penalty, easily saved by 40-year-old goalkeeper Remco Pasbier, was the perfect start to a shootout that was filled with slapstick, egregious incompetence and the occasional standout play.
In total, there were 34 penalty kicks taken – which, needless to say, is a UEFA record for any competition – and 25 were scored, with two completely off target and seven saved by Passver, five by Panathinaikos goalkeeper Bartlomieje Dragowski.
Ajax, who came second in the shootout, had five “match points” – the penalty kicks that would decide the outcome of the shootout – but missed the first four to win.
Striker Brian Brobbey came off the Ajax bench during extra time, probably not to take a penalty (there were 10 minutes left when he came on), but certainly with the shootout in mind. He was one of 12 players who had to take two penalties. He missed both of them. And both could have been the winning goal.
Missing one penalty in a shootout leaves you with deep shame and embarrassment, but you get over it. Missing two means you regret it for years. Missing two potential winners means… well, at least his team won in the end.
After Mancini's first (bad) penalty, the next eight were scored very cleverly by the likes of Steven Bergwijn, Kenneth Taylor (both Ajax) and former Leicester City winger Tete (Panathinaikos).
Then something strange started to happen. Brobbey stepped up. It seemed everyone expected him to score straight away. He's not normally a penalty taker, but he'd only missed one as a senior player and had a good success rate as an academy player. The home crowd chanted his name, he puffed out his cheeks and kicked with some force to the right of the keeper… and Dragowski saved it. The air in the stadium suddenly disappeared as if it had become the airlock of a spaceship.
Is it possible to “morally” dismiss a penalty that you have actually scored? If so, that's what the Greek team's next penalty winner, Dutch midfielder Toni Vilhena, did. He came through the Feyenoord youth system and spent eight seasons with the club's first team… in other words, Ajax fans hated him.
He hit a low kick to Pasweel's right and the goalkeeper ducked nicely and smashed the ball in with his arm rather than his hand…
…But the ball shot out from under him and for a moment looked like it would stay just wide of the goal – so much so that the Ajax fans began to celebrate – before it ended up sailing across the face of the goal and into the opposite corner.
Having heard the feedback from the home crowd, Vilhena decided to give back a little by quieting the stands. Would this come back to haunt him in the second half of the shootout? Of course not.
Next up for Ajax was Jordan Henderson, perhaps to remind everyone that he still plays for Ajax. Henderson and penalty shootouts aren't particularly friendly. It's easy to forget with England winning, but he missed in the shootout against Colombia at the 2018 World Cup and has only taken one penalty in normal time for club or country since then… and that was against Romania in a pre-Euro 2020 friendly for England. Luckily, he had no trouble here, sidefooting it straight down the middle and into the net.
Going deeper
Jordan Henderson – A serial winner, but now just an idea that fans hate.
Then came more mistakes, a miscue from Panathinaikos' Nemanja Maksimovic that was saved well by Pasbaer, but Ajax again failed to convert their chances, with Bertrand Traoré's shot going high and wide – a very difficult shot to shoot from 12 yards. After the penalty, an altercation broke out in the centre circle, with both teams frustrated by the extended shootout, leading referee Chris Kavanagh to give both players warnings.
The next penalty, taken by Panathinaikos' Sverrir Ingason, was too close to Passwil, who had to make a third save. At this point, Passwil and Dragowski of the other team hugged each other and started laughing. Yes, things were getting pretty funny. And it got even funnier when Dragowski saved a shot from Ajax defender Juri Baas after Ajax missed another chance to win the game.
This was a penalty shootout that nobody particularly wanted to win. On the touchline, Ajax manager Francesco Farioli looked like he was watching open-heart surgery, as did his opponent Diego Alonso.
But the 14 penalties that followed were all excellent, with the goalkeeper having little chance; he kicked himself and scored with minimal fuss, only heightening the tension. 14 penalties is one and a half times the normal shootout, after all. Panathinaikos substitutes and coaches, arms folded on the touchline, were reprimanded for encroaching on the pitch. At one point, Farioli retreated from the touchline and sat alone on the bench, his aorta pulsating about two feet in front of him.
Ajax then had another chance to win the game, when Panathinaikos centre-back Filip Mladenovic fired a powerful shot that was too close to Passbaert's left wing and saved.
Now came his chance for redemption. Just as he had done at the beginning of the shootout, Brodby stepped forward, knowing that if he scored Ajax would advance. He stepped forward, puffing out his cheeks again, determined not to make the same mistake again. This time he was going to deny Dragowski any access to his goal.
And he didn't score. The problem was that the only people who got close were in the back row of the Johan Cruyff Arena. Brobbey took a Chris Waddle-esque penalty high into the stands…
…and collapsed onto the grass…
… I lay face down and couldn't believe what I had just done…
…provides a classic “you can see exactly when his heart is torn in two” moment…
But wait. Enter Vilhena. You remember how the ex-Feyenoord player silenced the Ajax fans after (almost) scoring the first penalty earlier. That's understandable. He was abused, he scored and his job was done for the night. He won't need to take any more penalties. Right?
Alas, he was once again up against the exceptional Passwyl, and although the 40-year-old is not Ajax's first choice goalkeeper, he made an impression here by seizing his opportunity: Vilhena tried a penalty kick like the first, but this time Passwyl put his body on the line to make his fifth save.
“Five is certainly a lot,” he said after the game, with a straight face, and he also told Dutch TV he was laughing with former Ajax midfielder Wesley Sneijder, who was on the touchline during the shootout. “You save penalties sometimes, but I don't think you ever experience anything as crazy as this.”
The last time Passver saved a regulation time penalty was in Vitesse's match against Heerenveen in the Eredivisie in 2021. The last time he was involved in a penalty shootout was in the KNVB Cup (Dutch Cup) in 2017, again for Vitesse against AVV Swift. He didn't make a save that night.
Ajax goalkeeper Pasvaer celebrates the penalty shootout victory (Nikos Oikonomou/Anadolu via Getty Images)
“Remco asked me why there are no pictures of goalkeepers who have kept clean sheets,” Farioli told AFP, referring to the many pictures of Ajax greats that decorate the stadium's walls. “I told him maybe he should play a bit better, but now I think we should put up his picture straight away.”
Once again, Ajax had one kick to win. This time they did something funny. While the other players for the second penalty took them in the same order as the first, Ajax turned the tide by sending on winger Anton Gaei to take the 17th penalty, replacing Henderson. Gaei fired low into the bottom corner, Dragowski took it the wrong way, and finally, finally, the game was over.
Twenty-four minutes and two seconds passed from the moment Mancini took the first penalty to the moment Gaei scored the winner. Ajax won 13-12 and advanced to the playoffs, where they needed to beat Poland's Jagiellonian Bialystok to qualify for the Europa League.
This wasn't the longest penalty shootout in history – that title belongs to SC Dimona and Shimshon Tel Aviv, who converted 56 penalties in the Israeli third division play-off semi-final earlier this year.
But there was more than enough drama in this match, from a save from Pasweel to two errors from Brovey and utter despair from Farioli.
This weekend Ajax face NAC Breda in their second Eredivisie match of the season, and a quiet, boring 1-0 win looks set to be a good outcome for them.
(Top photo: Nikos Oikonomo/Anadolu via Getty Images)
