A penalty shootout is supposed to be the shortest way to settle an argument that ninety minutes and extra time could not resolve. Five kicks each, a winner inside ten minutes, everyone goes home. Except soccer keeps producing matches where the shootout refuses to end, where the tenth round arrives and both goalkeepers are still standing, and where players who have already scored once are suddenly called back to take a second, then a third penalty. These marathon shootouts sit at the extreme edge of the sport, and they reveal something the standard five-kick script hides: once a shootout goes long enough, it stops being about technique and becomes almost entirely about nerve.

This piece works through the longest penalty shootouts ever recorded, from professional cup finals to non-league fixtures watched by a handful of spectators, and looks at why these games go the distance in the first place.

 

The Longest Penalty Shootouts Ever Recorded

 

Where the Marathon Record Actually Stands

The current world record belongs to a match most soccer fans outside Israel never heard about. In May 2024, SC Dimona faced Shimshon Tel Aviv in the semi-final of a third-tier promotion play-off. Ninety minutes ended level, extra time swung one way and then the other before finishing 2-2, and the shootout that followed became a test of endurance rather than skill. Both goalkeepers were eventually forced to step up and take spot kicks themselves, several outfield players were sent back for a third attempt, and by the time Dimona finally won 23-22, the two sides had combined for 56 penalties. It broke a record that had stood for barely two years.

That previous record came from an unlikely source too. In March 2022, Washington and Bedlington, two non-league clubs from the north east of England competing in a regional cup barely anyone tracks, needed 54 penalties to separate them. Only around 40 people were in the ground to watch it happen, meaning the shootout technically involved more kicks than there were spectators present. Washington eventually won 25-24 after both sides traded conversion after conversion deep into extra rounds.

Go back further and the record holder for a genuinely professional, sanctioned cup competition is the 2005 Namibian Cup Final between KK Palace and Civics, which needed 48 kicks before KK Palace edged it 17-16. That match still sits as the benchmark that record bodies treat as the professional standard, since several of the more recent marathons involved amateur or lower tier sides outside the professional pyramid.

 

Why Professional Football’s Big Stage Rarely Sees These Numbers

It is worth noticing how differently this plays out at the top level of the sport. The longest shootout in men’s World Cup history is still only 12 kicks, a record shared by three matches: West Germany’s 5-4 win over France in the 1982 semi-final in Seville, Sweden’s 5-4 win over Romania at USA 1994, and Paraguay’s 4-3 win over Germany at the 2026 World Cup. Three different tournaments, three different eras, and all three stopped at exactly the same point. In UEFA club competition, the longest shootout on record is Ajax’s 13-12 win over Panathinaikos in a 2024 Europa League qualifier, which needed 34 attempts, still well short of the amateur game’s extremes.

The gap makes sense once you consider who is taking the kicks. Elite players are drilled on penalty technique, national federations study opposition goalkeepers in advance, and squads are deep enough that the fifth or sixth taker is often nearly as reliable as the first. Shootouts at the very top level rarely drift into unknown territory because the conversion rate stays high and someone usually blinks by round six or seven. The dynamic changes completely once you drop into lower divisions, where technique is less standardised and nerve becomes the deciding factor far earlier, which is exactly why the true endurance records almost all belong to non-league or lower-tier football rather than the game’s biggest stages.

 

What These Shootouts Reveal About Pressure

• Once a shootout passes the initial five rounds, momentum becomes psychological rather than tactical. Players who have already converted once often find the second or third attempt far harder, because the calculation shifts from routine to survival.
• Goalkeepers being forced to take kicks themselves, as happened in both the Dimona and Toluca marathons, is one of the clearest signs a shootout has entered genuinely unusual territory. It also flips the pressure, since a keeper missing a kick they were never trained to take carries a very different emotional weight than an outfield player doing the same.
• Long shootouts are rarely won by the technically superior side. They are usually won by whichever team’s confidence holds up longest under repetition, which is part of why lower league and amateur fixtures produce the true endurance records rather than elite competitions.

 

Notable Long Shootouts on the Big Stage

Not every memorable marathon happened in front of 40 spectators. Liverpool’s 11-10 win over Chelsea in the 2022 Carabao Cup final used every single outfield player from both squads, a rare case of a genuinely elite shootout stretching that far. Villarreal’s 11-10 win over Manchester United in the 2021 Europa League final followed a similar pattern, with David de Gea failing to save a single Villarreal penalty before missing his own decisive kick. More recently, Toluca’s 9-8 win over Tigres in the 2025 Liga MX Apertura final needed 24 attempts, with both goalkeepers eventually required to step up. These cases show that even at a professional level, a shootout can occasionally escape the usual five or six round script when nerve holds up on both sides for long enough.

 

Shootouts test something that ninety minutes of open play rarely does in the same way, and the psychology behind why favourites so often crumble once the kicks start is worth understanding on its own. For a deeper look at that side of the picture, see The Psychology of Penalty Shootouts and Why Favorites Often Lose Them. Readers interested in other extreme outcomes in the sport may also want to look at Highest-Scoring Football Matches in History, which covers the goal-scoring equivalent of these marathon results.

 

The record books show that the longest penalty shootouts in soccer history rarely belong to the biggest clubs or the biggest tournaments. They belong to the matches where nerve, not technique, is tested round after round until someone finally breaks.