Euphoria and agony. The two sides of the penalty shoot-outs that gave Paraguay a pass to the round of 16 this Monday, after beating Germany, and Morocco, which eliminated the Netherlands. But penalties were not always used to define ties and a coin was even tossed. Until everything changed in a historic match in the north of England.

Martyn Kelly remembers wishing he had a stool to stand on, like the rest of the children in the stands, to get a better view.

The world's first official penalty shootout was not something I wanted to see hampered by other people's heads.

On a warm afternoon on August 5, 1970, at Boothferry Park in the northern English city of Hull, a star-studded Manchester United drew 1-1 with second-division Hull City in a semi-final match of the now-defunct Watney Cup.

Six weeks earlier, the International Football Association Board (IFAB) had decided to end the days of a coin toss deciding the winner, in favor of five players from each team taking a shot from 11 yards (about 10 meters) away with only the goalkeeper to beat.

“Wow,” thought Kelly, then an 11-year-old Hull City fan. "He's George Best, one of the best players in history. He's going to take the first penalty in the first penalty shootout in the world."

Now that was worth seeing.

No one knew yet that this new method of deciding a tied game would become such a harrowing experience that some fans, players and coaches would barely be able to watch.

Before this, cup or knockout matches that ended in a draw were resolved with a new match, by drawing lots or by tossing a coin.

In the 1968 European Championship, Italy went to the final after hitting a coin toss, following a 0-0 draw against the Soviet Union. The final against Yugoslavia also ended 1-1 and, two days later, Italy won 2-0 when both teams met again for the replay.

For those who were not in favor of the existing ways of breaking a tie, the last straw came four months later.

The idea of ​​penalties

When the captain of Israel's team pulled out of a large Mexican hat a piece of paper that said “no,” determining that his team had lost its 1968 Olympic quarterfinal match against Bulgaria after a 1-1 draw, some members of their country's soccer governing body were furious.

Israel Football Association head Yosef Dagan said there had to be a better way to decide these important moments, or at least one that in theory depended less on luck and more on skill.

Dagan and Michael Almog - who later became president of the Israeli Football Association - developed the idea of ​​the penalty shoot-out before drafting an official proposal to FIFA in 1969. This was published in the body's official magazine.

In the letter, Almog proposed “putting an end to this way of deciding the winner through a draw, an immoral and even cruel system for the losing team and not honorable for the winner.”

He asked that it be replaced by a five-penalty shootout for each team. If they were still tied after that, it would continue until one team missed and the other scored.

The proposal was much debated before being finally adopted by the IFAB, at its annual general meeting in Inverness, Scotland, on June 27, 1970.

In addition to draws, coin tosses and replays, there had been other ways of resolving ties over the years, such as sharing titles or counting corner kicks, and there had also been versions of penalty shootouts in some minor competitions.

When BBC Sport asked FIFA to confirm whether the Watney Cup shootout was the first official penalty shootout, world football's governing body responded that it has "no record confirming or denying such a claim."

The National Football Museum, however, does refer to it as the first penalty shootout in England.

Several competitions, including the full rounds of the FA Cup until two seasons ago, continued to use new fixtures. It was not until the 1990-91 season that the FA Cup introduced penalties if the teams were still tied after extra time in a replay.

After that IFAB decision in 1970, it wasn't long before the first opportunity arose to see a penalty shootout used to decide a professional football match.

Would the successor to the coin toss be less cruel?

That night in Hull, at the Watney Cup, would offer some answers.

The historic match

"I couldn't believe it, my beloved Hull City was facing Georgie Best, Bobby Charlton and Denis Law. It's like having Messi, Ronaldo and Mbappé in the same team," Kelly recalled on the BBC's Sporting Witness program.

Former Hull City player Frankie Banks said: "It was a huge game, playing against Manchester United, who two years earlier had won the European Cup. The atmosphere was electric."

"The United players were our heroes. On paper we had no chance. We wanted to win, we wanted to show everyone that, although they were probably the best team in the world, we could go out there and stand up to them," he added.

And that's exactly what they did, taking the lead after 11 minutes thanks to Chris Chilton, before Law equalized for United in the 78th minute, sending the game into extra time. As the clock ticked into the extra half hour, the players realized they were about to be part of something historic.

“(Hull player-coach) Terry Neill obviously asked for volunteers, and some of the lads were hesitant to step forward to take the penalties, while others were brave enough to say, ‘I'll take one, I'll take one, I'll take another,'” said Banks, who was not in the squad that day but did attend the game.

“No one wants to be the one to fail.”

And, in particular, no one wants to be the first player in history to fail in a penalty shootout.

However, Best had no problem going down in history as the first player to score, sending his right-footed shot into the bottom left corner of the goal.

For Hull City, Neill became the first player-manager to score in a shoot-out, helping to keep the score level.

“Anyone could still win, and the noise was deafening,” Banks said.

But then, in a moment that countless great players would experience in the decades to come, Law saw his low shot saved by a diving Ian McKechnie.

“Law will forever be remembered as the first man to miss in a penalty shoot-out, and McKechnie will be remembered as the first goalkeeper to save a penalty in a shoot-out,” Banks said.

Ken Wagstaff missed next for Hull, so when Willie Morgan scored for United, Hull knew they had to convert their last shot.

And that's when McKechnie became the first goalkeeper to take a penalty in a shoot-out.

“Please don't let it be him,” Kelly remembers thinking. "I couldn't believe it, my mother couldn't believe it, even Alex Stepney, the United goalkeeper, couldn't believe it and actually asked him what he was doing up there. I had my head in my hands!"

McKechnie stepped forward and unleashed a powerful shot… against the top of the crossbar. And with that, he became the first goalkeeper to miss a penalty in a shootout.

"I still maintain that Ian McKechnie was the right choice: he had an exquisite left foot and he had the nerve to do it. I would have bet money on him scoring," Banks said.

“Missing that penalty stayed with him for the rest of his life.”

Of course, there have been many Laws and McKechnies since then. In fact, statisticians say that 24% of penalties in shoot-outs are missed.

These shots have decided some of the most important competitions, and the World Cup final has gone to penalties on three occasions: 1994, 2006 and 2022.

The first major international title decided by penalties was the 1976 European Championship, with the winning shot being the now infamous and audacious balloon named after Antonin Panenka.

Over the years, the England men's team has suffered a lot of shoot-out misery, losing seven times in major tournaments that way.

During this year's World Cup qualifiers, Wales' dreams ended at the hands of Bosnia-Herzegovina, in the all-too-familiar emotional rollercoaster of a penalty shootout.