"Penalty, I am Shadow Moth. Your classmates are forcing you to play soccer? I'm giving you the power to make them loathe this sport forever!"
—Shadow Moth
Chloé hates soccer. So when her excuses don't work and she's forced to participate in a game between her classmates, she deliberately gets akumatized in order to ruin the game for everyone. In order to stop her, Ladybug rounds up her own team to face off against Chloé's akumatized form: Penalteam.
Tropes:
- Badass Boast: Ladybug starts off bragging to Penalteam that she and Cat Noir can easily beat her and her copies without any other support. It isn't until Cat Noir says he's not great at soccer that she eats her own words and sheepishly backtracks on what she said and starts recruiting.
- Best Out of Infinity: When it seems like Penalteam is defeated, she instantly changes the rules and now has the game time running for infinity.
- Book Ends: The episode opens with Nathaniel refusing to play and the teachers refusing to let Chloé sit out. The episode ends with the class allowing Chloé to sit out and Nathaniel stepping in to play in her place.
- Brandishment Bluff: Caprikid pretends that the magic wand he created can give everyone unlimited usage of their powers. In truth, nothing he creates has any magic power and the wand is just a prop.
- Breaking Old Trends:
- This episode features the debut of not one but four new Miraculous holders, those being Miss Hound, Minotaurox, Caprikid and Rooster Bold.
- Penalteam is the first of Chloé's Akumatizations with a black and yellow color scheme who doesn't have "Queen" in her name.
- So far, all villain teams were made out of a few old villains returning. This time, not only Penalty is a new villain, she's the only member (or more accurately, all of the members) of Penalteam.
- Character Development:
- Sabrina finally stands her ground against Chloé in the finale by telling her that she doesn't want to stop playing soccer. Granted, she can't even finish the sentence, but points for effort.
- Ladybug is forced to let go of her Control Freak tendencies and actually rely on the other superheroes she called on.
- Clean Dub Name: Even though Marc's superhero name would be perfectly comprehensible to English viewers, it's understandable why it was changed from Coq Courage to Rooster Bold.
- Didn't Think This Through: Chloé hates football and took her powers to make everyone else hate the sport as much as she does. After they win, she sets the score to infinity, not realizing this means she'd be forced to play for eternity too. Downplayed as she assumed everyone else would get sick of the game (or run out of time after using their Miraculous) long before she would.
- Drama-Preserving Handicap:
- Alya, Ladybug's best ally and wielder of the Fox Miraculous, is instantly imprisoned by Penalteam before either she or Marinette can transform.
- For that matter, so is Alix who Marinette knows is destined to use the Rabbit Miraculous and become Bunnyx. Her power of time would not only be useful but Alix is a very skilled athlete and would have been a huge help in the game. Instead, Ladybug deploys all the remaining Miraculous except the Rabbit leaving Bunnyx's debut for another day.
- And, of course, just like in "Party Crasher" and "Miracle Queen," Viperion is immediately targeted and taken out depriving them of his very useful Second Chance ability. Since it happens before he's able to set up the power, he's unable to undo it and remained trapped. Ryuko, who has three power uses and is also one of their biggest guns, is the next to fall.
- Dwindling Party: Ladybug starts off with 14 Miraculous heroes including herself but the number starts to decline thanks to Penalteam using their cleats to take them out of the game. Unlike in previous situations like this, however, Penalteam only gets Viperion, Ryuko, Pigella and Cat Noir so the majority of the team manages to stay in the game.
- Enemy Mine: Lila realizes that she and Chloé have the same enemies (Ladybug and Marinette) and easily convinces her to make an alliance.
- Epic Fail: Cat Noir is the first in his team who manages to score a goal. Unfortunately he makes it on his own goal.
- Exposition: With numerous heroes present, four of them being new, there is a lot to explain. This includes Roustan narrating the match, explaining Minotaurox's power, and listing all temporary MIraculous holders (with the new ones introducing themselves), Ladybug explaining to Sabrina her power when giving her Miraculous and warning her teammates about Penalty's shoes, game plan scene which includes explaining Miraculous time limits and Caprikid's power and Rooster Bold explaining his power to Penalty.
- Fair-Play Villain: Averted. Penalteam makes up and changes the rules as she pleases, she also cheats and fouls like there is no tomorrow.
- Funny Background Event: Ladybug is bragging to Penalteam about how she and Cat Noir will devastate her in a soccer match while in the background, Cat Noir is fidgeting and trying to get Ladybug's attention so he can tell her that he doesn't know how to play soccer.
- Gentle Giant: Ivan is very self-conscious about his size and holds back while playing to keep himself from accidentally hurting anyone.
- Girls vs. Boys Plot: Subverted. During soccer practice, Alix eagerly suggests doing a boys versus girls match. Kim quickly shoots down the idea admitting that the boys will get slaughtered easily.
- Guile Hero: Once Penalty sends the game into overtime, knowing Cat Noir's timer is counting down, Ladybug tells everyone to convince the villain that she will lose and end the game herself. Caprikid's power of Genesis allows him to create any object. There is no magical power associated with it, but Penalteam doesn't know that. Rooster Bold's power of Sublimation allows him to do anything he chooses to do, such as score every time he gets the ball, making him an invincible striker; and Minotaurox's power of Resistance blocks the villain's powers from affecting him, allowing him unfettered access to the ball as a perfect midfielder. Miss Hound's ability, Fetch, likewise makes her an incredible defender, letting her magically retrieve the ball from wherever it is in play.
- Hidden Depths: Marc is revealed to be not just a talented writer but is a very avid and talented soccer player.
- Hoist by His Own Petard: After losing the first half of the game, Chloé just makes it so the game will last forever so she will inevitably outlast their Miraculous' durations...except Chloé hates playing soccer. Ladybug has the heroes use this fact against her so Chloé proceeds to angrily end the game herself in less than five minutes.
- Humiliation Conga: Happens to Penalteam when Ladybug decides to convince her hero team to use their powers to make her Rage Quit. First, Caprikid tricks her into thinking he made a magic wand that'll let them use their powers indefinitely. Then, Rooster Bold begins to shoot perfect shots while Miss Hound steals the ball away from Penalteam making them gain more points while the other heroes use their powers to keep Penalteam from scoring. The cherry on top is when King Monkey uses Uproar to mess up Penalteam's powers and make her whole team look utterly ridiculous/. They quickly begin to bicker with each other like chickens.
- I Am Not Left-Handed: Ivan holds back while playing soccer for most of the episode due to being afraid of hurting anyone. Once Ladybug convinces him that he'll be playing with a superpowered team against a supervillain and thus can't hurt anyone, the kid gloves come off and he becomes a huge asset to the superhero team.
- Invincible Hero: Invoked by Ladybug with her plan to convince Penalty that Caprikid removed everyone's time limits allowing them to play and use their powers indefinitely. Frustrated by their advantage, Penalty quits the game and breaks her own akumatized object.
- Invincible Villain: Penalteam bubbles her own Akumatized item so Ladybug can't break it and she can't be beaten in a fair fight because she can changes the rules whenever she wants. It would be only a matter of time until she manages to expose Cat Noir and capture the remaining heroes. The only way for Ladybug and her team to beat her is to annoy and frustrate her so much that she gets fed up and plonks down.
- The Juggernaut: As Minotaurox, Ivan's power of Resistance makes him immune to anything thrown at him, including Penalteam's cleats.
- Karma Houdini: Despite her humiliating defeat as Penalteam, Chloé herself doesn't face any consequences for willingly summoning Shadow Moth to Akumatize her just so she can terrorize her class. She even gets to stay out of the soccer game like she initially wanted. And then she reunites with Lila…
- Meta Power: As Rooster Bold, Marc's power is Sublimation, which allows him to choose any special ability he wants. For the fight against Penalteam, he chooses the ability to never miss a goal.
- The Millstone: Adrien/Cat Noir doesn't know how to play soccer and is not exactly useful to his teammates. In the casual class game, he commits a handball foul and gives the other team a free kick. In the match against Penalteam, he scores an own goal due to not knowing he has to specifically target Penalteam's goal.
- Moving the Goalposts: In the second half, Penalteam takes the game to the entire city, literally teleporting the stadiums' goalposts there to seal the deal. When she's about to lose, she sends the game into infinite overtime to beat the heroes by attrition.
- Not Brainwashed: Chloé is so upset over being forced to play soccer that she hopes for Shadow Moth to detect it and Akumatize her into a villain that'll make everyone else hate it as much as her.
- Oh, Crap!: Ladybug is horrified when Cat Noir informs her he's never played soccer before in his life.
- Opposing Sports Team: Penalteam in a nutshell, with the catch being that she's the entire team.
- Out of Focus: Inevitably with this many characters.
- Alya couldn't play because no one can know that she still gets to use the Fox Miraculous. Alix's superhero persona was already introduced but only as the future adult version. Both of them get caught by Penalty at the start of the episode.
- Since the team can only have eleven players on the field, Viperion, Ryuko, Pigella, and Cat Noir are captured early on leaving the exact number of heroes needed note The former two don't even get any lines. Downplayed with Cat Noir who gets some focus before being captured. The former three are also the only ones who don't get to use their powers.
- While Pegasus never gets captured, he doesn't get any lines. Ironically, he's the only hero to use his powers twice.
- In a broader sense, all four new heroes (Sabrina/Miss Hound, Nathaniel/Caprikid, Ivan/Minotaurox, and Marc/Rooster Bold) get much less time and focus than all of their classmates when they got their Miraculous and even their transformation sequences aren't shown. The same applies to their kwamis (Barkk, Ziggy, Stompp, and Orikko)
- Lila pretends to be injured so she doesn't have to play and isn't even seen for the most of episode, presumably sitting on the bench for the whole match. Subverted by the ending.
- The Pen Is Mightier: The miraculous tools for Rooster Bold and Caprikid are respectively a quill and giant paintbrush.
- Personality Powers: All of the new heroes introduced demonstrate this. Ivan's Miraculous lets him become invincible when faced with an Akuma's powers, Nathaniel and Marc's respective Miraculouses both tie into their creative natures (the former can create any item he can think of, the latter can give himself any power he can think of), and while Sabrina's ability doesn't directly relate to her personality, her getting the Dog Miraculous references her Undying Loyalty to Chloé.
- The Power of Creation: Nathaniel's power as Caprikid is Genesis, the ability to use his paint brush to conjure any object he can imagine. His only apparent limit is that it can't be anything with magical powers.
- Pragmatic Hero: Ladybug's plan to beat Penalteam is risky, requiring the heroes to use their powers 'infinitely'. When it is pointed out that they can't do that yet as they don't have the energy reserves, being children, she tells them that Penalteam doesn't need to know that. Cue Caprikid bluffing that his Genesis-created 'magical' wand can bestow unlimited usage on his team, turning them into invincible players.
- Psychotic Smirk: After telling Sabrina she's "waiting for a call", Chloé makes an evil-looking smile.
- Punched Across the Room: Or Kicked Across Paris, in this case. Carapace tries to block a goal from Penalteam but it's so strong that he ends up knocked out of the stadium and crashing into a monument halfway across Paris. Thankfully, Super-Toughness is in full effect and he can continue with the match.
- Radish Cure: Rare villainous example. Since Chloé doesn't want to be forced to play soccer, she becomes a supervillain soccer team so she can beat everyone so badly they'll never want to play again.
- Rage Quit: While Chloé hates soccer, she grows to utterly despise it upon playing against Team Miraculous and once they start humiliating her and her team, she starts blaming her clones for their failure. It isn't until King Monkey's Uproar that she gives up, although more to do with just how ridiculous her fearsome players looked with rubber duck shoes.
- Security Cling: Juleka and Rose embrace each other in fear when they see Chloé get akumatized.
- Sequel Hook: The episode ends with Chloé sitting next to Lila and entering a partnership with her.
- Shout-Out:
- Anime illustrations and some of the kicking poses done by characters are based on Captain Tsubasa.
- One kick done by Rooster Bold resembles the "Dragon Blaster" move from Inazuma Eleven.
- In English dub, Marc's superhero codename is Rooster Bold.
- Shown Their Work: Throughout the episode, Didier Roustan references and quotes many real football players and coaches.
- Special Guest: Didier Roustan, French sports journalist, voices himself in the French version.
- Summon Bigger Fish: Invoked by Chloé, who even says that there is a 'higher power' than her father's money that she is waiting for.
- Super-Strength: Not only can Penalty kick with enough force to easily drive a soccer ball through Carapace's Shellter, but also drag him several blocks and embed him into solid masonry with it too.
- Stating the Simple Solution: Sabrina suggests that Chloé could contact her dad and get the class canceled if she doesn't want to play soccer. Chloé opts to instead get akumatized and terrorize her classmates so they don't want to play.
- Summon to Hand: As Miss Hound, Sabrina's power is Fetch, the ability to teleport any object she touches with her tool back to her.
- This Is Gonna Suck: Cat Noir's face screams this when Ladybug leaves him to guard the goal against Penalteam alone while Ladybug goes to collect other Miraculous superheroes.
- Unspoken Plan Guarantee: Averted. The audience is privy to Ladybug's plan and it still goes off without a hitch.
- Verbal Backspace: When Marinette is figuring out how to include Chloé in the game while keeping it fair, she calls having her on the team "playing with a handicap". She quickly changes her wording but it's obviously too late.
- Villain Team-Up: The ending teases Lila and Chloé working together in service to Shadow Moth.
- You Are Better Than You Think You Are: Marc loves soccer but doesn't have much confidence in his own skills or his ability to be a superhero. It takes a pep talk from Ladybug about both to help him realize he does have what it takes.
- Zerg Rush: Employed by Penalteam to take the heroes out of the match. Special emphasis is given to the way they tag Cat Noir: one of the Penalteam throws a red card at him, which he Cataclysms out of reflex, only for the rest to surround him and tag him with their red cards.
