St. Clair says he does watch video and take notes on the potential penalty takers from the other team, but in the end, it comes down to intuition. “In the moment, you have to go with whatever you feel in that second,” he said. “Honestly, what I try to go into is to try to get them to miss the target, because then I don’t have to worry if I dived the right way.
“A miss is a miss. As long as the ball doesn’t cross the line, I’m happy.”
The shootout isn’t really a fair way to decide wins and losses; it’s a made-for-TV event, a way of eliminating the old custom of replaying the entire match, or staging endless extra time, to determine a winner. But it’s now part of soccer, and part of these playoffs — and so Minnesota United is going to do its best to be ready, when the moment comes.
