When Cristiano Ronaldo missed his penalty in Barcelona last week Mia Southgate turned to her father and declared: "Dad, that was lame." As someone well qualified to sympathise with the Manchester United winger, Gareth Southgate smiled before telling his nine-year-old daughter that she had been watching too many American programmes. Yet as he and Mia sat at home watching the Champions League semi-final first leg, Middlesbrough's manager was transported back 12 years.

Southgate is quick to stress that his infamous penalty shoot-out miss against Germany in the Euro 1996 semi-finals cannot be compared to Ronaldo's slip-up in Spain. "It's totally different. He's got another chance, another game to put things right and get them to the final and he might well win it for United at Old Trafford." Even so, should Barça prevail tonight the Portuguese may want to cross Bali off his list of potential summer holiday destinations.

Back in 1996 Southgate headed to Bali with his wife, Alison, determined to forget the penalty trauma. Having departed with the well meant but possibly ill judged words of his mother - "Why didn't you blast it, dear?" - still ringing in his ears, he began to relax in what seemed a romantic paradise. Then reality intruded.

"One day we found ourselves in an isolated Buddhist temple with lakes and volcanoes nearby," he recalled. "It was magical but unfortunately I was spotted by a monk who came over and said: 'You Gareth Southgate, you England penalty drama.' I reckon he was one of those long-distance Manchester United fans."

Ronaldo has told United supporters, "I'm going to score in Manchester," but some observers suspect that extreme stress blunts his glorious spontaneity and customary intuition. Perhaps the tension of a European semi-final explains why he struck his penalty high to the right rather than sticking to his tried and trusted method of aiming low into the left corner.

But then penalty-takers are sometimes damned if they do and damned if they don't. Just ask John Aldridge. Twenty years ago he was playing for Liverpool in the FA Cup final against Wimbledon. With the Merseysiders 1-0 down he took a penalty which was saved by Dave Beasant, who later explained that he had made a point of studying Aldridge's modus operandi from the 12-yard spot and, realising the striker was a creature of habit, knew he would strike it to the left.

Wimbledon duly won the FA Cup, just as Brazil lifted the World Cup in 1994 after Italy's Roberto Baggio - aka the Divine Ponytail - proved that he was a mere mortal by skying the ball over the bar at the conclusion of the shootout. It was horribly cruel on Baggio, who had at times virtually single-handedly dragged a weak and ageing Italy to the final. It would be similarly harsh if Ronaldo, undeniably United's outstanding player this season, were to be held responsible for a failure to reach Moscow.

If such disappointments can come to be seen as good for the soul - Southgate argues that his 1996 nadir has made him a "more understanding" person - different players have varying ways of numbing the pain. Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle, whose failures during England's 1990 World Cup semi-final shootout against West Germany prevented Sir Bobby

Robson's side from reaching the final, helped exorcise their demons with a spot of self-deprecation, namely joining Southgate in self-mocking Pizza Hut adverts, but Michael Gray required a different sort of therapy.

The then Sunderland left-back's shootout miss in the 1998 play-off final against Charlton cost his side a Premier League place and Gray was so distraught that

Peter Reid, Sunderland's manager, had him stay at his house for several days. Reid and Gray were spotted talking things through in assorted wine bars near the former's home in Yarm, but Ronaldo might not find being billeted chez Sir Alex Ferguson and watching Barça take on Chelsea or Liverpool from the United manager's sofa quite so convivial.