Why Are Penalty Shootouts So Hard? The Physics and Psychology of Twelve Yards

A ball struck well arrives before a keeper can respond to it, so the keeper must guess, and the choice is made before or as the ball is kicked, from the striker's run-up, hips and planting foot; a keeper who dives to the correct side reaches the corner in time perhaps half the time, and a ball placed high in the corner is unreachable. Studies of thousands of kicks find that keepers dive to one side or the other on about 94 percent of penalties and that strikers shoot to the middle about 17 percent of the time, so that staying still would save more than diving does; keepers dive anyway, because a keeper who stands still and is beaten looks as if he did nothing, and the pain of that outweighs the odds. Strikers, for their part, score about 85 percent of the time when they pick a corner and commit to it and about 70 percent when they wait to see the keeper move.

The same kick that is scored in training at 90 percent is scored in a shootout at 75, and the difference is the body's response to threat:

• •Attention narrows and turns inward, so that a movement normally automatic is consciously controlled and worse for it, the choking that studies of golfers and basketball players also find
• •The gaze goes to the keeper: eye-tracking finds that anxious kickers look at the goalkeeper more, and the ball follows the eyes toward him
• •The run-up shortens and the kick is hurried; players who take less than a second after the whistle score about 58 percent, those who wait at least a second about 80
• •Players who need to score to keep their team in it, as opposed to winning it, score less often, since the fear of loss weighs more than the hope of gain
• •The team going second loses more often, in some samples, because it is more often kicking to survive

The findings have produced a practice, adopted by the teams that have learned to win. Decide the corner before walking up and do not change it. Walk to the spot, place the ball, turn and walk back to the mark without hurry; take a breath after the whistle. Look at the spot in the goal, not at the keeper. Aim high, since a ball above a metre and a half is nearly unsaveable and the risk of missing is worth it. Choose the takers in training by their record, not by who volunteers, and settle the order in advance, since the players who choose to go last are the ones who least want to kick. England, after decades of losing, hired psychologists and rehearsed the walk from the centre circle, and won three of the next four shootouts.

The keeper cannot react, so the keeper prepares. Goalkeepers study the habits of every striker they may face, most of whom favour a side; they delay, adjust their gloves and the ball, and pace the line to lengthen the wait, which the rules now limit; and they gamble on a pattern. A 2010 study found that keepers facing a team that had scored three kicks to the same side were more likely to dive the other way on the fourth, a gambler's fallacy that strikers could exploit and mostly do not. The keeper also has the one advantage the striker lacks, which is that nobody blames the keeper for a penalty scored, so that the striker kicks under a pressure the keeper does not feel; the psychologists' phrase is that the striker has everything to lose and the keeper everything to gain.

Drawn knockout matches were once settled by replay, then by the toss of a coin, which decided a European Championship semi-final in 1968, and the shootout was adopted by FIFA in 1970 as fairer than a coin; the alternatives proposed since, from golden goals to a countdown of players, have each been tried and dropped. It remains the most watched fifteen minutes in football, the only moment when the sport's collective game reduces to one person alone against another, and the research has one more finding that explains its hold: fans, asked whether they want a fairer method, say they do not.

A penalty reaches the goal before a keeper can react, so the keeper guesses from the run-up and the striker's task is to commit to a corner and hit it, which succeeds about 85 percent of the time in calm conditions and 75 in a shootout because pressure narrows attention, pulls the eyes to the keeper, hurries the kick and makes players who kick to survive worse than those who kick to win. Deciding early, waiting after the whistle, aiming high and rehearsing the walk are what the teams that win have learned.