The fact that the English can't win a penalty shoot-out has been one of the most popular myths since they lost to Germany in the semi-finals of the 1990 World Cup and European Championship in 1996.
Her current coach Gareth Southgate is also part of this story, which he can no longer hear for a long time, as he failed as the only shooter at the German goalkeeper Andreas Köpke at Wembley Stadium.
But it is precisely with this miss that the chain of evidence begins as to why the English would win this time at Wembley if there were to be an ultima ratio penalty shootout against Italy.
England had also completed a penalty shoot-out and won at their home European championships before losing to Germany in the quarter-finals against Spain.
France failed in the same way in 1996: first won against the Netherlands in the jump-off, then lost to the Czech Republic from the point.
This duplicity of events can be read as the beginning of a miraculous series that has endured to this day: nine out of ten teams that have since suffered a second penalty shoot-out during a major tournament have been eliminated.
Only Croatia survived a second shoot-out against Russia in 2018, but this duel can be excluded, as both teams had progressed after a penalty shoot-out - and thus, logically, one had to come through again. The only real exception to the rule are the Argentines, who managed to survive two play-offs at the 1990 World Cup thanks to their almost insurmountable goalkeeper Goycochea. As a late irony of football fate, they were then defeated in the final against Germany with a penalty goal.
In football, as in life, you shouldn't challenge your luck too often. One explanation for the phenomenon could be that a shooter might think in the second round that the goalkeeper knows where he is shooting and therefore chooses the other corner. Or he thinks that the goalkeeper thinks that he thinks exactly that way and therefore chooses the same corner in which the goalkeeper is already lying. Either way, knots in the head are not effective as they can also cause knots in the legs. Against this theory, Southgate was not challenged at the first jump-off in 1996.
The second possible derivation is based on the law of large numbers, a mathematical principle that says that after a certain number of repetitions, the relative frequency of an event changes and the probability tends towards the middle.
In short: with a small sample of five shooters it can happen that they hit all against the probability, with ten not more.
Either way, the current European Championship confirms that a team should beware of a second jump-off.
Switzerland won from the point against France, but then lost to Spain, which again failed to Italy: Logical consequence: Italy would have had a penalty shoot-out in the final on Sunday (9 p.m. in the FAZ live ticker for the European Football Championship, on ZDF and MagentaTV) no chance - no matter against whom.
Not even against England.