Kepa: Viral footage of Chelsea man's penalty miss in Carabao Cup defeat to Liverpool | OneFootball

Chelsea’s Kepa Arrizabalaga was the man who missed the deciding penalty in the Carabao Cup final against Liverpool on Sunday evening.

Having been brought on to replace Edouard Mendy in extra time due to his expertise in shootouts, Kepa was forced to step up and take a penalty of his own after every single Liverpool player had scored.

The 27-year-old had made the difference off the bench during the UEFA Super Cup shootout against Villarreal, but couldn’t do enough to stop 11 consecutive spot-kicks from flying past him.

Kepa misses penalty vs Liverpool

As such, Kepa found himself in unfamiliar territory by placing the ball on the spot just a few seconds after his opposite number, Caoimhin Kelleher, had held his nerve to complete the set for Liverpool.

However, the world’s most expensive goalkeeper proved not to be as efficient in shootouts with his feet as he has so often been with his hands, lumping a poor effort miles over the crossbar.

There was a surreal few seconds where the ball sailed into the Liverpool fans behind the goal where time seemed to stand still and the gravity of what had just happened dawn on the Chelsea ‘keeper.

Kepa mocked for missing the target

It’s never nice to see anybody missing in a crucial shootout that decides the course of a major final, but it’s especially gut-wrenching when it’s a player who ordinarily would never be expected to take a penalty.

Nevertheless, there can be no escaping the fact that Kepa’s penalty was a truly terrible one with the sheer height of his shot prompting some fans to cruelly compare it to a rugby conversion on Twitter.

Marry that to the standard jokes that Kepa’s shot will have landed on the moon or in someone’s back garden, and it won’t be surprising to learn that there was plenty of interest in where his miss ended up.

Viral footage of Kepa’s shot

Well, actually, we have a pretty good idea because freelance presenter Will Brazier has gone viral for accidentally capturing the moment that Kepa’s doomed spot-kick catapulted into the Wembley celebrations.

By his own account, Brazier was simply recording the Liverpool fans’ reaction to the cruel penalty, only for the damning trajectory of Kepa’s shot to make a cameo in the background.

With more than 4,000 retweets and almost 35,000 ‘likes’ at the time of writing, the viral footage of Kepa’s penalty flying painfully high into the Wembley rafters has become essential online viewing – check it out:

Did you see it? Yes, yes, that really is the ball.

It can happen to anyone

Sadly, some penalty misses are worse than others with David Beckham, Sergio Ramos and Neymar all having lumped 12-yard efforts into the atmosphere in their time.

Liverpool fans even know what it’s like to see one of their players lump a penalty miles over the bar in a League Cup final when Charlie Adam produced one of the worst spot-kicks of his career back in 2012.

As such, it’s painfully inevitable that Kepa will be pelted with various jokes and jibes across social media in the coming days with this particular video highlighting the aching extent by which he missed the target.

However, we can’t let it take away from what has undoubtedly been a superb season for Kepa who, despite never having reached his potential at Chelsea, continues to prove himself as one of the world’s best number two goalkeepers.

Penalty misses can happen to anyone and we don’t doubt for a second that he’ll come back stronger.