Eric Dier reflects on the excitement and certainty of his ‘special’ World Cup penalty shootout moment

It is illustrative of Dier’s competitive personality that such a historic English moment still doesn’t completely stand above everything else for him from the Russia 2018 experience

It is usually one of the most pressurised and nervous moments of any career but, for Eric Dier, it involved serenity. In fact, there was actually more than that. There was certainty.

That was partly down to all of the preparation that Gareth Southgate’s squad had put in precisely for shootouts like that against Colombia in the World Cup last-16 but admittedly also what happened just before the Tottenham Hotspur midfielder stepped up for his fateful spot-kick. Carlos Bacca missed, to give Dier the opportunity to be one of those rare players to send England through in such a game, rather than one of the many players to miss and send them out.

“The psychology changed when the player before me missed, so I knew I was taking it to win not to stay in it,” the 24-year-old explains. “That made a big difference, a massive difference. When I was taking it to win it I was just excited. I was quite confident I was going to score.”

He explains there was really no nervousness or reticence at all.

“No, not really. It was something that was really incredible to be a part of. It’s funny, from the minute we met up with England for the World Cup, we were practising penalties and I practised a lot all the way through because I had a feeling it might appear at some time. You don’t know if it’s going to be you or not but I had that kind of feeling that if it did come to that I wanted to be ready. I spoke to Harry Kane about it actually the day after or something, and we were saying that when you’re standing there, on the halfway line, you’re nervous. Of course you’re are. You’re very nervous and all kind of different things go through your mind. But once I walked up, once I was standing there to take it I was actually really quite calm to be honest. Just through having so much repetition of it I was just in a really good space to take it. I felt confident in that moment.

“It’s nice. But there were five people that took penalties and there were 15 people that played 120 minutes and the whole squad that trained all week to be in the place that we were. Obviously in football you remember that moment, but there is so much to it. It is something that, whenever I am out and about, it’s the only thing that people talk about it.”

Eric Dier scored England’s winning penalty against Colombia (Getty Images)

And it is illustrative of Dier’s competitive personality – that will for more – that such a historic English moment still doesn’t completely stand above everything else for him from the Russia 2018 experience. He can remember sitting on the bench just as much.

“Obviously it was difficult for me because every player wants to play and I didn’t play as much in the World Cup as I wanted to, so I tried to react to that in the best possible way. It’s not nice, not playing, but you have to try and be ready and try to help the team in different ways. That was an experience for me that I learned a lot from and had to deal with. Just going so far as a team in a tournament, you are in a different area that you have never been in before. It’s a unique situation, to have experienced it once is special.”

He himself is one of very few players to have done something special in a shootout for England.