Erling Haaland gave Omar Marmoush a penalty in the FA Cup final, who then missed it. Man City’s striker was heavily criticized for this decision, but the statistics were on his side.
The fact that Erling Haaland was allowed to talk Manchester City’s season into the ground in an interview shortly before the FA Cup final was only fitting. On and off the pitch, nothing seems to be going right for the defending champions in 2024/25, and both trends continued seamlessly on Saturday at Wembley.
ManCity squandered their last remaining chance of the title with a 0-1 defeat to outsiders Crystal Palace, and Pep Guardiola got into a public altercation with Palace keeper Dean Henderson after the final whistle. And then everything went wrong for ManCity’s best chance of the day.
With the score at 0-1, City was awarded a penalty. Haaland grabbed the ball in his usual manner, kissed it, and then passed it to teammate Omar Marmoush, who failed to beat Henderson (36′). And afterwards, everyone was asking: What on earth was Haaland thinking?
“The moment the penalty is given, it’s about how they feel. And they decided that Omar was ready to take it,” Guardiola searched for an explanation, which was not enough for some observers. “Erling Haaland is a world-class striker, but when we talk about Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, they would never give up that ball,” said former striker Wayne Rooney, speaking as a BBC pundit. ”That’s the difference. They are selfish and want to score in every game.”
Haaland himself did not comment after the game, but he had a few good reasons for his unexpected and ultimately fatal decision: The once ice-cool striker had missed three of his last seven penalties, while Marmoush had last failed in 2021 while playing for VfB Stuttgart. In addition, Haaland was only playing his second game after weeks out with injury.
Henderson: “I knew I would save Marmoush’s penalty.”
Or were the circumstances to blame? Haaland had failed to score in all seven of his previous finals with ManCity and in his five appearances at Wembley. Both streaks continued, and one would rather not know what the 24-year-old would have said about the season on Saturday evening if he had been interviewed again.
Henderson, who was fortunate to still be on the pitch at that point, did not miss the opportunity to rub salt into the penalty wound. “With Haaland, I wouldn’t have known which way to dive. With Marmoush, I knew which side he would shoot. I knew I would save it.”
