JOHANNESBURG — Gerardo Martino slumped in his chair, shook his head sadly, then stated the obvious.
"Everyone knows it's unfair to have games decided by a penalty shootout," Paraguay's coach said after his team's second-round World Cup match with Japan. "But that's the way it is."
And Martino's team won. So imagine how Japanese coach Takeshi Okada felt. He and his players dedicated years to get to the World Cup, only to be eliminated in soccer's equivalent of a free-throw contest.
No wonder Okada quit moments after the game.
"Every coach would like to see a match decided in 90 minutes," Germany's Joachim Loew said. "Because I don't think there's any way you can prepare for penalty kicks."
Yet that's exactly how Sunday's World Cup final between Spain and the Netherlands may end. Penalty kicks have determined two of the last four World Cup champions, and they were used to eliminate two of the final 16 teams in this summer's tournament.
But that doesn't make it right. Or even just — as when Ghana's coach, Milovan Rajevac, called his team's quarterfinal loss to Uruguay on penalty kicks "football injustice."
Soccer, after all, is the only sport in which the clock never stops and the players and ball remain in constant motion. Yet if two teams remain tied after 90 minutes of regulation time and 30 minutes of extra time, all that suddenly becomes irrelevant.
The ball is placed, immobile, 12 yards from the goal, and everyone but the striker and keeper stand around and watch.
Each team gets five chances, with the sides alternating kicks in an order determined by a coin flip. If one team builds an insurmountable lead, the game ends there. If the teams are tied after five rounds, the shootout continues into sudden death.
That means teams well-versed in other skills such as Spain, which excels at ball-handling and passing, are stripped of their strengths. Yet penalty kicks are still fairer than the system they replaced.
Before FIFA adopted the penalty-kick format in 1970, in major tournaments where a complete replay was not possible, ties were often broken by a drawing of lots. Italy advanced to the 1968 European championship when it beat the Soviet Union in the semifinals by drawing lots. And Israel lost an Olympic quarterfinal that same year in the same way.
After that second match, the story goes, Israeli officials proposed that FIFA adopt a penalty-kick format similar to those used in domestic tournaments in Europe and South America as early as 1952.
FIFA agreed, and the penalty shootout made its World Cup debut during African qualifying in 1977, when Tunisia beat Morocco. The first shootout in the championship tournament came five years later, when West Germany bested France in the semifinals, and it was used to decide the champion in 1994, when Brazil beat Italy, and 2006, when Italy beat France.
Along the way some teams have learned to excel at penalty kicks. Germany, for example, which plays Uruguay in the third-place game Saturday, has not lost a shootout in a major competition in 34 years. In fact, no German player has missed a shot in that time.
England, on the other hand, has lost six of seven matches that were decided on penalties.
Still, Loew insists it's not a skill you can master.
"It is not something you can replicate on a training field," he said. "There is so much pressure and burden. You have a situation where a player will possibly have to kick in the most important penalty of his life. How can you copy that?"
And some of the sport's greatest players — Diego Maradona, David Beckham, Cristiano Ronaldo and Roberto Baggio — have missed penalty kicks in major championships.
Spanish coach Vicente Del Bosquedoesn't have his players practice them.
"I guess the players will decide themselves, and those who are the usual suspects will be shooting the penalties," he said with a shrug. "They will not be under the directive of the coach."
kbaxter@tribune.com