Euro 2025: Pressure and better keepers – why penalties are being missed?

As well as being better prepared, Jordet also feels female goalkeepers are more capable physically, thus allowing them to more easily save penalties.

“For a long time, goalkeeping has been less developed in the women’s game,” he explained. “There are physical limitations such as height and it is more difficult to defend the goal than male counterparts.

“But now with increased professionalisation, they are finding ways to be smarter, to read their opponents.”

For years, critics of women’s football have gleefully posted videos of goalkeepers struggling to stop tame shots, or posted on social media and under online articles how women should play with smaller goals or pitches.

But whether it was the five saves Hampton made on Thursday against Sweden, the four penalties stopped by Falk, or the absence of amateur keepers at the Euros, there is less evidence to support that view.

Indeed, when Falk herself stepped up to take the fifth penalty against England, Hampton was worried as the Lionesses had not prepared for how she would take them.

“I think sometimes keepers don’t get enough credit,” England back-up goalkeeper Khiara Keating told BBC Radio 5 Live.

“Obviously there’s the backstage things that you don’t see – the analysis, the hard work in training, the reading, the body language. The keeper standard is getting way better.”