Former Chelsea defender Franck Leboeuf has blasted Manchester duo Paul Pogba and Bruno Fernandes for their penalty-taking techniques told them to lay off with the theatrics and copy Cristiano Ronaldo instead. Coindidentially, PSG’s Neymar and Kylian Mbappe also came under fire from Leboeuf on the same issues.
The players in question have seen it fit to introduce a contemporary style approach with a very deliberate and slow approach to the ball in an attempt to deceive the goalkeeper.
Ronaldo, on the other hand, opts for a more traditional run-up in sprinting to the ball and blasting at the goal, which has seen him score countless penalties for club and country over the years, including two more on Tuesday against Luxembourg.
And Leboeuf believes players should take a leaf out of the Portuguese superstar’s book when it comes to stepping up from 12 yards.
“I scored a lot of penalties in my career and I never thought about playing with the goalkeeper,” Leboeuf told Ladbrokes.
“I don’t care about the goalkeeper, for me the only thought that I had was to put the ball in the net, not waiting for the goalkeeper to make his move.
“Before they were making moves much more than now because now they can’t move, back then they were moving forward like one or two yards to close the angle so it was even harder.
“I saw Ronaldo, scoring a penalty for Portugal, he doesn’t think about playing with the goalkeeper. Neymar is great but he misses some, and you shouldn’t play with the keeper.
“When I started to think ‘oh last time I shot right and maybe the goalkeeper knows that so I should go left’, forget it, you’re dead.
“When you do the run like Pogba, Bruno Fernandes, Neymar and Mbappe as well, you start thinking of missing it and the goalkeeper starts thinking of playing with you so it becomes a lose-lose situation for me and it doesn’t help.
“It’s so much easier to score a penalty than stop it, so just stop playing around and just score the goal.”
Fernandes faced criticism for his penalty in the Premier League contest against Aston Villa last month.
United fans thought Ronaldo would be tasked with the responsibility, but Fernandes stepped up and blazed his effort way over the bar.
Leboeuf joined Chelsea in 1996 and went on to make more than 100 appearances for the club across five seasons, and the centre-back was also capped 50 times by France, before calling time on his professional career in 2005 following a two-year spell in Qatar.