Who remembers the good old days when footballers took penalties by simply running up to the ball and trying to whack it past the goalkeeper?Well, fast forward to 2021 and the world of penalties looks very different.Of course, Antonin Panenka changed everything when he dinked the ball over the goalkeeper in the final of the 1976 European Championship, but even after that we've seen incredible evolutions and innovations in penalty techniques - particularly when it comes to run-ups.Nowadays there's Nottingham Forest's Lyle Taylor, who looks to put goalkeepers off by slowly wading up to the ball before slotting it past them, Chelsea midfielder Jorginho, who takes a cheeky bouncing step before he strikes his spot kicks, and Preston North End's Paul Gallagher, who keeps his back to the goalkeeper before spinning around and blasting the ball home. Paul Pogba, meanwhile, is notorious for his own unique penalty technique of seemingly taking as many small steps as possible before hitting the ball - a technique which actually hasn't been that successful for him because he's scored nine but missed four during his time at Manchester United.Apparently undeterred by the fact the World Cup winner's run-up style hasn't yielded particularly encouraging results, one young hot shot over in Japan has taken the Pogba school of thought to the extreme.
When it was his turn to take a penalty in the All-Japan High School Championship, the youngster started off by taking a few sideways steps to change the angle of his shot, before literally tip-toeing the entire way from outside of the penalty area to the ball.
From when he first started moving, he took an incredible 18 seconds to actually strike the ball. Audacious to say the least - so it's good news for him that in the end his effort managed to get past the goalkeeper.
With Pogba's run-up technique already seemingly influencing the next generation of budding young footballers breaking through, who knows how ridiculous they'll get by the time the Manchester United star hangs up his boots.