Penalties and Roman Weidenfeller. That used to be one of those things. Either the goalie dived into the right hand corner - and the ball went in on the left. Or the penalty taker took aim for the right hand corner - and Weidenfeller decided to dive to the left.

No, in his younger years Roman Weidenfeller was certainly not known as a 'penalty killer'. He is one of the strongest goalkeepers in the league, he is a giant on the line, but when it came to penalties, where there is exactly 10.9728 metres (12 yards) between the golakeeper and the penalty taker, he nearly always lost out.

It wasn't until the 6.March 2005 when he saved his first penalty in the league: this was against the Nürnberg player Marek Mintal. But it took another five years until he saved his second penalty (against the Mainz player Polanski on the 31.10.2010) - and since then he has established himself as a real 'penalty killer'. On the 20.December 2011 on the way to the Cup Final and the first Double in the history of the club, Weidenfeller saved a penalty from Thomas Bröker in the penalty shoot-out against Fortuna Düsseldorf. Four months later his penalty save against Bayern's Arjen Robben made sure BVB were on course to defend the Bundesliga title. And the ex-Schalke player Kevin-Prince Boateng was the first Schalke player in history to miss a penalty in the derby, because Roman Weidenfeller saved his penalty on the 26.October 2013.

Three years later Weidenfeller's penalty saves put Borussia Dortmund through to the last 16 of the DFB Cup. He saved penalties from Felix Kroos and against Stephan Fürstner and made sure Berlin were the ones to lose out. The  experienced goalkeeper said after his 436. competitive game for Borussia Dortmund: "in the end it's all about having a feel and instinct for where the ball will go. It is really important to me to exude a sense of calm during a penalty shoot-out and to give the team the feeling that we will get through this and win in the end."

The older he gets, the more penalties Weidenfeller saves

And in addition he had some invaluable support from his goalkeeping coach Wolfgang "Teddy" de Beer. This was because the Cup hero from 1989 had intensively studied some videos before the game. "I watched Fürstner and Kroos this afternoon!" the 52 year old shouted laughingly and he raised a folded A4 piece ofpaper into the air with the Berlin penalty takers noted on it.

Regardless of all the euphoria and adrenalin, Weidenfeller was very down to earth when he said: "we should not have allowed it to be so tense and we did not paint the best picture of ourselves." But Borussia are through to the next round - thanks to their 36 year old experienced goalkeeper. Boris Rupert