By the way...

Eleven meters must be yours?

(Bild: GEPA)

"Krone" columnist Harald Petermichl took a closer look at the penalty kick in soccer. And found out that neither the penalty spot is a point, nor does the distance to the goal line have to be exactly eleven meters.

Unless you are a fan of FC Kryvbas Kryvyi Rih or spend your nights in Jagiellonia Bialystok bed linen, you are unlikely to be aware that the play-offs for the three European competitions have long been underway. You don't have to understand their regulations, the main thing you need to understand is that there will be significantly more games in the future, whether in the Champions, Europa or Conference League. So it takes special events to get one of these matches into the top sporting news. This was the case last Thursday, when Ajax Amsterdam fought a penalty thriller with Panathinaikos Athens in the third qualifying round for the play-offs and came out on top with a score of 13:12 after 34 penalties had been taken.

This is indeed a record for a UEFA competition, but 34 attempts from the spot are almost laughable compared to the 56 it took last May for SC Dimona to beat Shimshon Tel Aviv 23-22 and force a deciding match for promotion to the Israeli second division. However, there is a veritable scandal behind all these record-breaking reports because, firstly, the ominous point is not a point at all, i.e. "an imaginary geometric shape with a specific position and no extension", but a filled circle, and secondly, it is not eleven meters from the square, but 10.973 meters. This was established in Ireland in 1891 and still applies today, even though a stingy Bernese groundsman set the penalty mark at just ten meters at the Stade de Suisse in 2006, which only came to light after six matches had been played.

Apparently the man, who has remained anonymous, did not extend the goal area, which ends 5.4864 meters before the outer goal line, across the unmarked pitch parallel to the touchline to the penalty area boundary at 16.459 meters, then drew two diagonals to the other corner of the goal area and then defined the point where the two diagonals meet as the penalty mark. Well, be that as it may, in the 2,000 matches it will take to determine the future winners of the three European competitions, there will certainly be one or two 10.973-meter shoot-outs. Let's hope that the groundsmen have paid close attention to geometry so that the referees can continue to point to the ominous filled circle with a stern face and without hesitation.