ESPN’s Taylor Twellman: How World Cup Goalies Prepare to Face Penalty Kicks

A Fox camera caught the Argentina team huddled around a water bottle, studying it like a scouting report. Because that is exactly what it was.

Jordan Pickford had every Argentina penalty taker's tendencies printed on the side of his bottle, and after England's keeper turned in what Rich called a heck of a game, the internet found the receipts. ESPN's Taylor Twellman joined the show to explain what fans were actually looking at, and the answer is less about spycraft than about homework.

"This has been going on for a while," Twellman said, tracing it back roughly to the 2012 Euros, when he was covering the tournament for ESPN. That was the first time he noticed goalkeepers writing on their bottles. The tell back then was almost comic. You could read the notes through the broadcast feed because the marker was bleeding from the condensation.

The craft has since gotten more professional. About five or six years ago, Twellman started seeing the notes printed and wrapped around the bottle rather than scrawled on in Sharpie. He also pointed out that the job itself has changed, since the rules now require a keeper to keep one body part over the goal line. Drift out in front of it and the kick can be retaken.

The most interesting wrinkle was what the note about Messi actually meant. It read "fake left, go right," and the natural assumption is that Pickford was predicting Messi's move. He was not. He was reminding himself of his own.

Twellman explained why that distinction matters so much in the moment. When he broadcasts a game and says a taker loves to go to the goalkeeper's right, he is describing two completely different perspectives at once. A keeper cannot afford that confusion with the ball on the spot.

"You don't want to read it and say, whoa, whoa, whoa, am I talking Messi's left or my left?" Twellman said. "No, it's all his direction. Fake left, go right."

Asked whether that was a wise way to approach Messi specifically, Twellman gave a genuinely surprising answer. Messi has struggled with penalties across his career, at least relative to the caliber of player he is. By Twellman's count he has missed four in World Cup play, possibly five, spread across his whole career rather than this tournament alone.

"I've seen Messi take penalties with ease and I've seen Messi really miss penalties," Twellman said.

Which suggests Pickford's bottle was not a hunch. It was a database.