I honestly don’t believe the le Fée pen was worse.
With a penalty a large element of it is what I believe statisticians call ‘game theory’. You have to beat your opponent. The shooter has the advantage as he gets to pick where in the goal he is shooting, and so long as it is on target and not where the keeper chooses, it is a goal.
Most keepers instinctively dive either to the right or left almost all of the time, befor or as the ball is kicked. This means a panenka drifts helplessly over the sprawling keepers legs. Yeah they look cool, but actually it’s not about looking cool, it’s about playing the odds, and provided your chip down the middle doesn’t go over the bar, it is more likeley to score than not. I would guess that standing still as a keeper would result in a penalty save less than 5% of the time, which means a keeper is almost always going to dive.
When a panenka goes wrong though it looks horrendous. If le Fée had blasted a pen to the keepers left and the keeper guessed correctly and tipped it onto the post, then nobody blames le Fée. But where the keeper guessed the panenka, it looks terrible and he gets vilified for it.
In Diarras situation though, sliding the ball to the right of the keeper makes it a 0%game for the keeper. And assuming Talbi doesn’t miss the open goal it’s a certain goal.
Le Fée chose the option that statistically provides the higher goal probability, Diarra chose the option that statistically provides the lowest, in the face of an option that provides an almost certainty of a goal.
I do feel a bit conflicted with though calling Diarra out, because the pile-on on here is ridiculous. I think he played well on the whole, and I like him as a player and I feel he has a lot more to offer us. Whereas I know a lot of people for some obscure reason love to hate a member of our team and have elected him to be our wicker man.
But ultimately, I feel strongly that he made a horrendous choice in that moment, whereas I stand by le fees penalty and feel that it wasn’t horrendous and was just unlucky.