That penalty kick was truly shocking. Absolute chance down the toilet
Shades of Robbie Baggio against Brazil in the shootout in 1994. That was blazed over the bar too
I'm not familiar with WC history - did Baggio have a record similar to Kane's? I think Kane had scored 18/21 penalties for England prior to the miss, with none being off target
I don't remember his WC record but I do know he had the record for best PK success rate for Italy in Serie A. And he came into the 1994 WC as Italy's talisman, their trequartista, and he needed to convert his penalty to keep Italy alive, and he smashed it over the bar. It just reminded me of that - Italy probably wouldn't have made the final if not for Baggio, he scored 5 goals in the knockout stages including 2 against Nigeria in Foxborough (that was the game after which I really started to follow soccer). Then he scored again against Spain (I was cheering for Italy, my dad was cheering for Spain as he's half Spanish
) and then again against Bulgaria. But then in the Final he missed what was the last penalty kick in the shootout and Brazil won and he's forever remembered for that. He made up for it in 1998 scoring a penalty against Chile but obviously missing one that could have kept you in a WC final is a bit different.
I remember Baggio because in a way he became my first soccer player I followed, before that I didn't really follow the game, didn't know anything about it, there was no MLS and the NASL was a shambles, poorly run...it wasn't till the World Cup that the world's best players came to the US and I started to learn about them and more importantly saw them play. I adopted Italy as my team for that tournament after the US were eliminated by Brazil and I adopted Baggio as my guy
His misfortune reminded me of Kane...a guy you'd expect would be money from the spot. But pressure does some strange things to people. Though in Kane's (and Baggio's) case I don't think they choked, he just hit it wrong, got under it too much and that was that.