The famed Italian striker Roberto Baggio didn’t just miss his shot in the penalty shoot-out for the World Cup Final in 1994, he looped it high over the bar like a schoolboy novice, making Brazil world champions.

True, the midday sun had heated the unshaded Rose Bowl field in Pasadena to a throbbing near 40 degrees and the teams faced each other through a shimmering heat haze. But heat and match conditions could not account for Baggio’s mistake. There was only one explanation: pressure.

Sport is a great laboratory of human behaviour, but a penalty shoot-out – along with competition golf – offers the best opportunity to observe performance under pressure. That pressure is of course highest on the penalty-taker because it’s so easy to punt a ball into a huge goal – any player can do it most of the time. Goalkeepers are under less pressure because it is so hard to protect 18 square metres of space and they are heroes if they succeed.

But taking a penalty mirrors much of life – successful execution is assumed but failure leads to opprobrium. After his failed shot, Baggio famously stood stock-still, head down, leading to him being described as “the man who died standing”.

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