17 March 2025
Footballers taking penalty kicks are sometimes sacrificing the best shots to prioritise their credibility, an award-winning study suggests.
A team of researchers analysed 536 penalty kicks from the UEFA Champions and Europa Leagues to reveal that when given the choice of aiming for the top corner of a net, which is statistically more likely to result in a goal but also runs the risk of missing the goal completely, kick takers are choosing to shoot towards other areas of the net where not only does the goalkeeper have a greater chance of making a save but the overall kick success rate is lower.
The study, which is awaiting journal publication, found that for every 100 penalty kicks, players choose safer shots that put 3 more kicks on target (forcing the goalkeeper to make a save), but this caution costs them 1 goal they would have scored with riskier shots to the corners.
51ºÚÁϳԹÏÍø economist Professor James Reade, and co-authors from the University of Stirling and Syracuse University in the USA, were commended last week after beating thousands of submissions and six other finalists to win the annual research paper competition at last week’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, USA. The event is a major forum for sports professionals, business leaders, and researchers to discuss trends, analytics and innovation in the global sports industry.
Professor James Reade said: “Penalty kick takers are happy to trade off the chance of scoring a goal with looking like they made a mistake by missing the target. Missing the goal versus being saved by the goalkeeper might be the same outcome for the team, but to the player, that distinction matters enormously. Footballers’ ego is getting in the way of optimal performance."
The study draws comparisons to elite basketball players, such as Shaquille O’Neal and Andre Drummond, who have stated publicly that they won’t attempt underhand free throws despite evidence that they could improve their rates of scoring.
Image: Professor James Reade (second from left) and co-authors at the MIT Sloan Sports conference
Do Behavioral Considerations Cloud Penalty-Kick Location Optimization in Professional Soccer: Game Theory & Empirical Testing using Polynomial Regression and ML Gradient Boosting, which is awaiting journal publication, is
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