Portugal’s Diogo Costa Shines in Euro 2024 Penalty Showdown

Cristiano Ronaldo had the chance to send Portugal into the Euro 2024 quarterfinals from the penalty spot but in extra time, denied by a fine save by Jan Oblak.

Instead, the hero was young goalkeeper Diogo Costa, who kept up – and indeed improved – his superb penalty save rate by stopping all three of Slovenia’s spot-kicks in the shootout.

Despite his career still being in its early stages, 24-year-old Costa has already demonstrated his penalty-saving expertise on a number of occasions.

The Porto stopper has saved 10 penalties in regulation time during his career, the last of which came in November 2023 as his club side defeated Vitória Guimarães.

According to Transfermarkt, Costa has conceded 14 of the 24 penalties he has faced over 90 minutes, with his 10 stops resulting in a save rate of 41.67%.

Until he faced Slovenia, penalty shootouts had been a different story, albeit with a very limited sample size.

In his five seasons as a professional, Costa had only taken part in one penalty shootout.

In the 2023/24 Champions League, Porto were defeated by Arsenal in the round of 16 after the tie had finished 1-1 on aggregate.

After his heroics in Frankfurt, however, all of a sudden he has saved 42.86% of penalties (three of seven) he has come up against in penalty shootouts.

A statistic which strikers left in the tournament will now be well aware of as approach.