Is there anything science can tell us about taking a penalty kick? The goal in soccer is a lot bigger than the goalkeeper, so it should be easy to score, but so many penalty takers don’t. Is there a well-founded, foolproof way of taking fear, emotion and human error out of the equation and guaranteeing a goal?
(Continued)
• The notion, mentioned by an earlier correspondent (20 August), that the Italian soccer team used (consciously controlling bodily functions that normally operate subconsciously) to help win the 2006 World Cup does nothing to describe what their success was due to.
To answer whether there is a foolproof way to guarantee scoring a goal, there clearly is not. The question does not account for the presence of the goalkeeper, who can make the target for the kicker much smaller if they guess correctly which side the kicker is aiming at. That makes for more errors in kicking, even when the kicker aims where the goalkeeper isn’t. However, game theory suggests that if the behaviour of either the kicker or goalkeeper is predictable, then an advantage can be gained – not a “guaranteed goal”, but an increase in the percentage of successful shots (or, indeed, successful saves).
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To prevent this advantage, the only solution is for both kicker and goalkeeper to choose a side at random – not easily done in the human brain. And goalkeepers may learn to read small movements made by some kickers.
In order to be truly random, perhaps coaches could flip a coin and then send an order to the kicker, and do the same for the goalkeeper. In this case, the kicker needn’t try to kick to a spot that the goalkeeper can’t reach, it being understood that 50 per cent of kicks will likely be blocked and 50 per cent will get through.
So much for the theory. Even if each game were totally random, there would still be a winner in a penalty shoot-out, who might well have many beliefs as to the “reason” for success. You might as well ask a lottery winner the “secret” of their winning.
“Even if each game were totally random there would still be a winner in a penalty shoot-out”
Don L. Jewett, University of California, San Francisco, US