‘That penalty changed my life’: Panenka’s pride 50 years on from special spot-kick

Czech’s audacious defiance of Sepp Maier in Belgrade has slipped into football folklore: ‘The only disadvantage is that I don’t get any royalties from it’

Antonin Panenka laughs like a bear might, a low rumble, suggesting mischief among the memories. He is sat in an office at Bohemians football club in Prague, recounting the story of his impudent, revolutionary penalty that not only won the 1976 European Championship for Czechoslovakia against West Germany but soured his relationship with the goalkeeper his spot-kick humiliated, Sepp Maier. “He went 35 years without uttering a single word to me,” he smiles.

But the feud went much deeper. “I read some articles that he even had a shooting target in his garage with my face on it that he used to fire darts at. We get on well enough now though.”

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