Cristiano Ronaldo is standing on the edge of the D. The Croatian goalkeeper stands still on the goal line at the other end. It’s a wild-west face off of the football variety. Here one shoots, the other saves. The ball fits between them.
The next few seconds will decide the fate of the world famous footballer. In the 67th minute of this World Cup knockout round, Ronaldo’s Portugal are trailing by a goal and the clock could very well be running out for Ronaldo. Should he kick to the goalkeeper’s right or left? Pause the frame and check the statistics for the answer.
In his seminal book on football shootouts, Pressure: Lessons from the Psychology of the Penalty Shootout, Norwegian researcher Geer Jordet provides the numbers. Going right, the chance to score is 70.7 percent; Going left, literally 71.2 percent.
Conversely, going straight down is actually the best option, with the scoring probability reaching 77.9 percent. Rationale: Most goalies second-guess. With the ball speeding towards them, there is no time to react after the kick, so they must decide in advance, choose a side. The easiest way to beat both the keeper and the odds is to go straight down.
Ronaldo paused before taking a penalty against Croatia but converted it. (AP)
But goalkeepers also have researchers. What if they stood up? Then straight kicks land in their thighs. Saving makes the taker an instant villain: bran, fake panenka.
Ronaldo took the biggest gamble of his life. He starts, then suddenly stops in his tracks. The Croatian keeper dived to his right. Ronaldo’s pause has done its job: he goes straight. goal 1-1. He, and Portugal, live to tell the tale.
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CR7 came close to joining football’s hall of shame of failed penalty-takers, a cursed fraternity of men like Baggio, forced to relive their worst day every time they stepped out. For some, that won’t help either.
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Which raises the real puzzle: why do the best players in the world, men who can thread a pass through four defenders, sometimes have nothing between them and the goal but a set of gloves twelve yards away?
“Why didn’t you kill me now?” Barbara was the mother of Gareth Southgate after her son missed a crucial penalty against Germany in the 1996 Euro semi-final. A loving parent, but a natural reaction, and one that echoed in living rooms across England that night. Barbara’s line will go on record, the familiar cry fans have let loose when a player fails to do what seems deceptively easy.
A few days ago, Messi also had this disappointment when he hit the post against Austria. Even Buenos Aires would have thrown their hands up to see their greatest player fail at football’s simplest task.
Messi misses penalty against Austria (AP)
Over the years, research scientists, neuroscientists, economists and pundits have all tried to crack this battle of nerves in team sports. What makes it fascinating is how little is actually cracked. Every angle is investigated, but no one solves the penalty. It remains a suspenseful drama that enriches the plot of football, the ultimate test of coolness. A strange geometric puzzle where nothing can work but anything can be handy. Even Mrs. Southgate’s sage suggestion: “Why don’t you just do it?”
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Hungary captain and Liverpool main man Dominik Szoboszlai really believes in Mrs Southgate’s “hack it in” approach. The son of a failed footballer and reformed gambling addict, Szoboszlai spent around five hours a day playing football from the age of six, logging 10,000 of his hours before adulthood, with his father as coach and taskmaster. As well as being a skilled footballer, he became a specialist penalty-taker: picking a spot, kicking low and hard, rendering the goalkeeper useless.
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A story from his RB Leipzig days: Facing PSG in a Champions League game where a goal would deny PSG a point. Szoboszlai went in to take it, Neymar tried to play mind games. He had chosen the wrong man. “Are you going to score?” Neymar asked. “Yes.” “Are you sure?” Szoboszlai, calm and matter-of-fact: “Yes. I never make mistakes.” He was right. Donnarumma turned right; Yet the kick followed him, in the same direction, no contest.
How can Szoboszlai be so sure of himself? Training and temperament, perhaps, but this slam-bang approach offers no guarantees. Jordet’s book is full of cases where it didn’t hold: England’s Chris Waddle in 1990, too hasty on his run-up; Steven Gerrard, in 2006, described the wait before his turn as an unbearable countdown in his own head. Jordet’s diagnosis is the same in both: fear, urgency, the desire to end the waiting and stop the pain.
So is the stuttering approach good? Not always. Nothing is carved in stone when it comes to spot kicks.
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Marcus Rashford, another English player with penalty trauma, has his own stutter-penalty story. In his book, he writes about missing the Euro 2020 final against Italy, a game in which he and other players who failed to score, mostly black footballers, were cruelly trolled to question their future in the game. “I don’t usually get nervous playing football,” he wrote. “But that day, something was off, the brain wasn’t telling me ‘just do your best’ like it always did.” Instead: “You must be perfect.” So he tried something different: a stutter run, a pause in the path of the ball. He was not used to taking this suggestion at his feet.
Even the brilliant penalty-takers, Messi, Harry Kane, have given up chances after their own stutter. Which brings us back to where we started: Why do the most skilled footballers in the world fail to beat a six-foot goalkeeper defending an eight-foot-tall, twenty-four-foot-wide goal?
Football’s greatest thinker, the late Johan Cruyff, put it simply. “They look so easy, that’s why they’re so difficult.” So the next time someone who can’t put a crumpled piece of paper in the bin says, “Why didn’t you put it in?”, tell them to shut up.