The art of the penalty: The secret behind Harry Kane's perfect run

Exactly seven medium steps backwards, the same as always. Just like the position: relaxed, slightly to the left of the ball. The eyes still fixed on the penalty spot. Shortly before, he was still inspecting the round, white spot on the pitch, memorising every unevenness, scanning the spot where he would place the ball. Harry Kane carried the ball there conspicuously long and carefully, almost cautiously in both hands. Now, against TSG Hoffenheim, what always follows when Kane steps up: a penalty goal.

Statistics smashed

It’s supposedly one of the easiest shots in the sport of football – one that can make heroes and tragic heroes. It’s an extremely safe goalscoring chance: 11 metres from goal, without opposition interference, a dead ball in front of the 7.32-metre wide and 2.44-metre high goal. According to bundesliga.com statistics, the strike rate is at 77 percent. Harry Edward Kane, born 31 years ago in Walthamstow, East London, has shifted that statistic. In fact: no, he’s smashed it for himself. “It’s awesome, a brutal quality, which is underappreciated by amateurs on the outside because they think that a professional footballer should put the ball in the net from 11 metres,” said Joshua Kimmich after the 1-0 win over Borussia Mönchengladbach. The winning goal was scored by Kane – from the penalty spot.

92 penalties, 81 scored

The Bayern goal-getter has already taken 92 penalties in his career, converting 81 of them – a strike rate of over 88 percent. This season, after netting from the spot against Gladbach and then again to make it 3-0 against Hoffenheim four days later, he’s on 100 percent. In fact, all 18 of the spot-kicks he’s taken for FCB to date have resulted in goals. The penalty that the Engand captain converted against Hoffenheim on Wednesday evening was the 12th in the Bundesliga.

Tunnel vision

The people in the Allianz Arena rose from their seats, mobile phones out. As they always do. They know what’s about to happen. Because Kane has achieved something that hardly anyone else has managed in the great history of the Bundesliga. The eyes of 75,000 football fans are fixed on the Bayern striker. Kane is not bothered by this, he’s calm deep within himself. He controls his breathing, doesn’t hear the noise – not the whistles of the opposing fans, nor the shouts from the stands. He no longer sees the people, the many phones that are now filming. Harry Kane only sees the ball. And the goal.

Then he exhales once more, having descended deeper and deeper in the seconds before, like an endlessly long ladder, rung by rung into a dark tunnel of concentration. Then he starts to move, his upper body bent slightly forwards, his steps firm, controlled, yet so full of lightness and tension in one. It's a very unique, unusual symbiosis: four quick steps, the last one slightly delayed, his gaze briefly looks upwards, his upper body straightens up. Then the contact with the inside of the right foot, just a split second in which the foot hits the ball – full, firm, giving it a direction and sending it off towards goal.

A penalty like a symphony

Kane’s penalty-taking is his own symphony, a work of art. When you look at him, it’s as if he’s not leaving anything to chance, right down to the last detail. And yet, Kane reveals it’s not always like that. Every spot-kick stands alone. “Every penalty is different,” he says. “Sometimes I look at the goalkeeper, sometimes I pick out a corner. It’s a thing of a lot of training and routine.”

His last miss from the spot came at the 2022 World Cup in Qatar in the quarter-finals against France. A match in which Kane stepped up not once, but twice. The first, to make it 1-1, was hammered into the middle left corner like against Hoffenheim. The second appeared to be a fault in the system as he fired centrally over the bar. Kane almost never goes down the middle. Of the 18 penalties he’s scored for Bayern, Kane has opted for the centre of the goal just once – six times he’s gone right, 11 times to the left. He’s shot low 10 times, mid-height eight times and never into the roof of the net. All of them have gone in since then.

Doing it for the family

As it did against Hoffenheim. After powering the ball into the left side, Kane kissed his wedding ring finger, something else he always does. It’s a sign, he once explained, of giving something back to his family, of showing how important his wife and his children are to him.

Here are the higlights of the match against Hoffenheim - including Kane's penalty: