Amid jubilant cheers from the home crowd and vociferous protests from the opponents, there is a short delay before the spot-kick can be taken as fans inside the stadium and across the plethora of social media platforms available today vote for who they want to step up from 12 yards.

The votes are tallied and rectified and the supporters’ choice trudges up to the spot, knowing they can become either the hero or the villain of the piece while the fans are safe in the knowledge that they have done everything they can for their beloved club.

While said example is extreme and exaggerated, the foundations have been laid for even greater fan influence in sport by the brave masterminds behind Formula E, an eco-version of its bigger brother Formula One which has just entered its second season, where only electric cars are permitted.

Around a month before every race on their calendar, they allow fans to vote for their favourite drivers, either on the designated mobile application or on the competition’s website, and the top three who receive the most votes are given what they call a “FanBoost”, which allows them to receive a five-second jolt in power of roughly 40 brake horsepower.

This can be used, albeit only once, at any point during the race and provides the drivers with an advantage to perform a crucial overtake, therefore allowing supporters to have a direct effect on the race’s outcome.

Those behind the “FanBoost” initiative, the first of its kind in any sport, claim it was established to truly reflect the “interactivity” of the world we live in, giving fans the opportunity to “play an active role in influencing the outcome of the event”.

Their words, not mine, which ironically outline the key problem of the concept.

Of course, fans are often said to influence their nation’s athletes at an Olympic Games or World Championships, for example, but the boost they provide is merely emotional and doesn’t dare to breach the physical.

And that’s the way it should be.

I sat and listened to Formula E director of media Ali Russell detail the scheme at the recent SPORTEL Convention in Monaco open-mouthed - doesn’t “FanBoost” go against the very essence and very core of sporting competition?

Forget all the doping and cheating that has become much more than a thorn in the side of sport - on the start line of every Formula E race, those competitors should have an equal chance of success and once all the preparation and talking is said and done, they are the ones who are ultimately responsible for their fate.

But “FanBoost” will surely just adhere to the more popular drivers, shunning those who are less revered by the audience but who are perhaps no less talented than their counterparts, taking a portion of what the athletes have worked so hard for and ripping it out of their hands.

The likelihood is that, if a driver were to lose a race fair and square, barring any controversy they could come to accept it, but suffering defeat as the result of direct fan influence would surely be hard to swallow and ultimately difficult to fathom.

Another problem with “FanBoost” is that the introduction of such a radical step into the unknown comes at a time where match-fixing and betting scandals are never far from entering the sporting arena.

Fixers would surely rub their hands at the chance of having such a profound impact on an event as they could more easily manipulate the result in their favour, though this is an issue Formula E aren’t hiding away from.

Formula E claim to have so far been able to contain any potential threat by only allowing fans with registered accounts to participate, while all votes cast are monitored by external auditing company PwC.

They also have an emphasis on the process being fair and equal.

Scenario number two. A driver is approaching the finishing line to win a race which could secure desperately-needed points in their pursuit of the Drivers’ Championship, but is pipped to the post by a fellow driver who was tactically initiated his “FanBoost”.

Is that fair and equal? Doesn’t that also go against everything sport stands for?

Russell, however, is sticking to his guns, telling insidethegames “FanBoost is an influence on the race as opposed to defining the race”, yet he is perhaps forgetting the countless examples over the years in which titles and medals have been won or lost by the narrowest of margins and he surely cannot rule out the above scenario actually coming to fruition at some point in the future.

“FanBoost came from an effort to get fans closer to the action,” he explains.

“We are the next generation of motorsport and wanted to bring gaming into real life. FanBoost we believe engages and creates a healthy relationship between fans and drivers.

“I’m sure this will be imitated by other sports as it is so engaging.”

While Russell is confident that "FanBoost", or similar aspects of it, may be adopted by others in years to come, it remains to be seen whether it will ever be embraced by other sports or whether it will continue to be exclusive to a sport which is still trying to emerge from the wilderness.

It will most certainly never reach the Olympic stage, despite the propensity of the International Olympic Committee to want to prove they are capable of moving with the times, but those who harbour the most extreme views may perhaps feel in the back of their minds that the fans inside the arena would do a better job than the judges in gymnastics and boxing, for example, both of which have had well-documented issues with scoring in the past.

Despite the seemingly obvious drawbacks with the initiative, there appears to be no concern about "FanBoost" as a whole from those at Formula E, with chief executive Alejandro Agag claiming it positively bridges the gap between fans and sport.

“We want, for the first time, to make a sport accessible to the fans, interactive with the fans,” he is quoted as saying on their official website.

“Many people talk about interactivity and they say everything is interactive, but how do you make something really interactive? Doing FanBoost.

“Giving a real advantage, giving more horsepower in the race to three drivers.

“We want to introduce this element of interaction between the fans and the sport and it’s the first time in history that this thing is in place.”

For me, this type of thing should remain firmly limited to television programmes such as the X-Factor in Britain, where the general public have the final say on who wins a lucrative singing contract and who returns to their day job with only the memory of their brief moment of fame to savour.

Boiled down to the core, sport is about the athletes. Of course fans should interact with the sport that they love and follow with such admirable fervour and passion by purchasing tickets and screaming their support until their throat is hoarse, hopefully providing enough of a boost to get their chosen athlete or team over the winning line.

But it is there where the influence of fans in sport should stop.