The pressure of knock-out football reared its head at the Under-20 World Cup in New Zealand yesterday with three of the four quarter-finals decided by penalty shoot-outs.
Brazil, Mali and Serbia all advanced to the semi-finals courtesy of nerve-shredding shoot-outs, as heavyweights Portugal, Germany and the United States all crashed out.
Only Senegal sealed a result inside the 90 minutes following a 1-0 win over Uzbekistan in Wellington.
It was the second successive match the Brazilians had won on penalties as they held their nerve to win 3-1 after they were lucky to escape with a tense 0-0 result against Portugal after extra-time.
Mali and strong favourites Germany had been locked at 1-1 after extra-time before the African side prevailed 4-3 on spotkicks, while Serbia won 6-5 after their match against the US ended in a scoreless stalemate.
Brazil had beaten Uruguay 5-4 on penalties in the round of 16 and coped with the pressure better than the Portuguese, who saw Raphael Guzzo, Andre Silva and Nuno Santos all miss from the spot in Hamilton.
Portugal wasted numerous chances to seal the game in normal time, with Rony Lopes coming closest with a snap-shot on the turn that slammed off the far post.
The normally ice-cool Germans also appeared to have suffered an attack of nerves and went out after Julian Brandt and Niklas Stark missed their spotkicks in Christchurch.
Germany were seemingly coasting to the semi-finals after Brandt opened the scoring in the 38th minute as Frank Wormuth’s side dominated possession.
A missed 56th minute penalty by Hany Muklhtar, however, proved to be a portent of what was to come as Mali goalkeeper Djigui Diarra’s diving stop gave confidence to his team-mates with Souleymane Coulibaly equalising two minutes later.
Senegal joined their west African counterparts in the last four after Mamadou Thiam scored the only goal that sealed a result in normal time in the 77th minute.
In Auckland, Nemanja Maksimovic, the ninth Serbian to take a spotkick, finally sealed the shoot-out when he beat Zac Steffen to set up a semi-final with Mali at the same venue on Wednesday.
Neither side were able to finish off the shoot-out, with Steffen and his Serbian counterpart Pedrag Rajkovic making two saves each, while both sides combined to miss three other shots, only increasing the tension for both sides.
Brazil will play Senegal in Christchurch in the first semi-final on Wednesday.