Pause, rewind, play: Czechoslovakia’s unlikely win at Euro 1976 and the birth of the Panenka penalty

International football may not be the bread and butter of the sport but it has often provided football with its most iconic moments. Be it Pele announcing his arrival in 1958 or Diego Maradona’s Hand of God to Roger Milla’s dance and even Zinedine Zidane’s headbutt. Nothing adds more colour to football than its occasional international competition that bring the world together.

While the Fifa World Cup is the world’s biggest footballing festival, the European Championship which is pretty much a World Cup of European nations is not far behind in its contribution to the footballing archives.

A tournament that started thirty years after the first World Cup took some time to come to the boil. Only four teams participated in each of the first five editions but the final one of those in 1976 which was the most competitive European Championship prompted Uefa to go bigger.

With the tournament finals featuring two semi-finals, a third-place playoff and the final, Euro 1976 was the first edition where every match went beyond the regulation 90 minutes. The teams were so evenly matched that it required two hours of football for every match to be settled.

West Germany and Netherlands two teams who had contested the World…

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