What it means
پنالتی (penalti) is a penalty kick in football, awarded for a foul inside the box. It is also the word used for the penalty shootout that decides knockout matches level after extra time, in which case Iranians often say ضربات پنالتی (zarabat-e penalti, penalty kicks). One word, two related stages of the same drama.
How to use it
davar penalti gereft, hame-ye varzeshgah saket shod.
The referee awarded a penalty, and the whole stadium went silent.
داور پنالتی گرفت، همهی ورزشگاه ساکت شد.
bazi be zarabat-e penalti keshid.
The match went to a penalty shootout.
بازی به ضربات پنالتی کشید.
In Iranian football memory
Penalties carry a special weight for fans of the تیم ملی (tim-melli, national team). Big tournaments are remembered partly by penalty moments, the goals scored, the saves made, the misses that ended a run. Domestically, the لیگ برتر (lig-bartar) season has its own catalogue of penalti scandals, with arguments about whether the davar (referee) saw what really happened, and replays examined frame by frame on talk shows the next morning.
Goalkeepers who save penalties become folk heroes overnight, and strikers who miss them spend weeks defending themselves in interviews. The drama scales: in the Champions League stages of Asian club football, an Iranian side surviving a shootout is a national news story by the time the bus reaches the hotel.
Where the name comes from
پنالتی comes from the English penalty, by way of the broader European football vocabulary that reached Iran in the early twentieth century along with کرنر (korner), داربی (darbi), and گل (gol, goal). The stress falls on the second syllable: pe-NAL-ti. The word sits comfortably in everyday Persian, and you will hear it from grandparents who never watch football using it for any unfair small punishment.
In our voice
Penalti is the kind of word a learner picks up in a single afternoon of watching football with an Iranian friend. By the time the keeper guesses wrong and the net moves, you will be shouting it too. Add it to your first hundred sports words alongside گل and کرنر and the conversation in any chaikhaneh during a big match will start to make sense.
References
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