Why legends shouldn’t shoot penalties
Or at least not in World Cups
Disclaimer 1: This is not a detailed and in-depth study. I did this research out of sheer personal interest for this specific topic, hence enjoying the process. Due to the limitations of the research, the results are not decisive, but I hope they serve to bring a new interesting insight into a topic that could be studied further. It’s a long-shot theory, to call a spade a spade.
Disclaimer 2: Only in-game penalties were analyzed, not penalty shootouts. The reasons for this will become clearer towards the end of the article.
Disclaimer 3: It’s football, not soccer
Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luka Modric. Football legends. All three are amongst the best players in the world right now, and are the stars of their respective national teams. But they also have another thing in common: they all missed penalties in Russia this year.
It seems pretty straight forward that when a player goes down in the box and a penalty is awarded, you should pick your star player to take the shot. Surely it will give you the best odds. But after watching live when all three of these legendary players missed a penalty in the World Cup, I started to wonder if that was really the best strategy. Hence, I set out to analyze all penalties kicked in Russia to figure out what types of players had the best success rates.
I started out with a hypothesis:
“Legendary players perform worse than average in penalty kicks because there’s so much information and footage available on them that opponents can study trends and patterns in their kicks, giving goalkeepers a better chance of saving them.”
The idea was that penalties by themselves are pretty much about luck for the goalkeepers, who barely have time to react to the ball, and must simply pick a side before the kick and go for it. Because of this, in such an important competition as the the World Cup, I believe the coaching staffs probably spend a considerable amount of time trying to minimize this luck factor, by using statistics to help goalies defend better. The video below is a nice representation of what I am saying here.
However, an important factor in statistics is sample size. It is much more significant to find a pattern for a player who kicked 100 career penalties than for one who kicked 10. Which is why I came up with the hypothesis. Adding on to the hypothesis, I supposed that players that are currently stars, but have not played for too long, will probably perform better than average, given that they have more talent than the average player but not too much footage to be analyzed by opponents.
Use this index to jump to the section of your interest:
Preliminary Method
To start off, I needed a definition of “legend”:
Legend: A player who has consistently been one of the top players in the world for many years, is a star for both his club and national team and is in the latter half of his career.
Then, I needed a way to separate players in categories, which is why I chose to score them on a binary system in relevant categories. The categories I chose were:
- Age (under/over 28): 0 points given to players under 28, and 1 given to players 28 and above. With this category, I aimed to measure for the amount of footage that would be available for the player. With some exceptions (e.g. Mbappé), players tend to come into the spotlight in their 20s, meaning that players over 28 would have surely accumulated a lot of film for scouts, whereas players under 28 might still be growing in their careers, and not have as much material available. 28 is also the age when players are starting to flip over to the other side of their physical prime.
- Top 25 player in the world?: 0 points given to players not in the Top 25 and 1 point given to players in it. This aims to measure the level of quality of the player. Used to distinguish between stars/legends and great/good players. Legends must have a point in this category, and usually, we expect players in this list to be good at penalty kicks.
- Top 100 player in the world?: 0 points given to players not in the Top 100 and 1 point given to players in it. Same idea as above, works to separate players by their level of skill. Helps separate top-tier players from second-tier players. Players found in this list should, according to our intuition, perform better at penalties than players who did not make the list.
- Top 2 player in national team?: 1 point if the player is one of the two best players in his national team, and 0 if he is not. This category aims to account for players who might not be among the best in the world, but are still stars in their respective national teams, making them a target for opposing scouts.
After accounting for all 29 penalties in the World Cup, and scoring the players who took them according to the criteria above, I got the following results:
“Legends”— 4 points: Cristiano Ronaldo, Lionel Messi, Luka Modric (2/5 penalties scored, 40% success rate)
“Great players” — 3 points: Harry Kane, Antoine Griezmann, Mohammed Salah, Eden Hazard (8/8 penalties scored, 100% success rate)
“Good players” — 2 points: Gylfi Sigurdsson, Bryan Ruiz, Artem Dzyuba, Mile Jedniak, Shinki Kagawa (6/8 penalties scored, 75% success rate)
“Lesser-known players” — 1 point: Victor Moses, Fahad Al Muwallad, Andreas Granqvist, Karin Ansarifard, Salman Alfaraj, Carlos Vela (5/6, 83% success rate)
“Lesser-known players” — 0 points: Ferjani Sassi, Christian Cueva (1/2, 50% success rate)
Total & Average: 23/29 penalties scored, 79.3%
See something odd yet?
But the categories had a problem. Based on the hypothesis, my goal was to account for how much footage/stats are available for each player, and age does not do that too well. Yes, older players likely have more footage, since they have played for longer, but what if a certain player only really reached the spotlight at 24, when another might have been in the spotlight at 18? A player might have been playing pro for a long time, but it is harder for scouts to gather info from a player that has been playing in Portugal’s second league than for a player from La Liga.
Thus:
Final Method
To account for the margin of error from using age as the metric for amount of material on a player, I decided to go a little deeper, and add another category: “Years in the global spotlight”. The idea was to research when a player actually came to be more known globally in his career, since that would be a better indication of the amount of easily available material on the player, which is what I was trying to measure. Again, it’s easier to scout a Premier League player than an Allsvenskan player.
To decide when a player came into the global spotlight, I chose the following specifications:
A player has come into the global spotlight when he is a starter for the majority of the season and a productive piece of a club that is either in one of the world’s best leagues, or one of the world’s best clubs on its own.
After researching each player individually, I then had a number for “years in the global spotlight” for all of them. For this category, to achieve more accuracy, I decided to use a ternary system, instead of a binary one. In the end, the categories looked like this:
- Age (under/over 30): 1 point for players 30 years old or older, and 0 for those below. I decided to change the age from 28 to 30 because since I had the new category, I did not need to try to measure amount of available material with age, and could focus on age as a factor alone. 30 is regarded as an age when players are starting to get “old”, which could affect their ability to shoot an in-game penalty.
- Years in the global spotlight: 0 points for players with 5 or less years in the spotlight, 1 point for those with 10 or less, and 2 for players who have been in the global spotlight for more than 10 years.
- Top 25 player in the world?: Same as before
- Top 100 player in the world?: Same as before
- Top 2 player in national team?: Same as before
With the new categories, I got the following results:
Results
Now, although the sample size is quite small (discussed further later in the article), the results are pretty interesting. In this World Cup, the “Legends” had an abismal success rate for in-game penalty kicks. And not only that, they reached that low percentage while shooting against some of the weaker teams of the tournament. Ronaldo missed against Iran, Messi against Iceland, and Modric against Denmark. The other two kicks, that actually went in, were against Spain and Nigeria. Out of those five teams, three didn’t even get past Group Phase, and the remaining two dropped out in the Round of 16.
In addition, looking at the results would tell us that your best bet is to have your younger stars take the penalties. Guys that are very good but just haven’t reached “legend” status yet, or crossed over to their 30s. They were 8/8 in this World Cup, so, not bad.
Therefore, ignoring the informality and unprofessional aspects of this research, let’s look at why it may be that these legends miss more penalties than your average player:
The large amount of scouting material
The first possible reason was discussed already in this article. Players that have been among the top in the world for a long time have countless hours of easily available footage for scouts to look at and analyze. Because of this, scouts can probably make more accurate predictions that can help a goalie catch a penalty. Of course, players change their way of kicking and develop different habits over the years, but if closely examined, it is possible that scouts can find some small tendencies that prevail even over many years. And the larger the sample surface, the higher the chance of finding something. When the subject is penalties, any tip can help.
Additionally, since these players are expected to kick every penalty, scouts can focus all of their energy into looking at one specific player, rather than having to scout the many possible options. It is also less information for the goalie to focus on when he only needs to know about one player, rather than learn about three and have to figure out on the spot if it was Granqvist or Toivonen who liked to kick to the left side.
Age/Physical capability
To be considered a “Legend”, a player must have a legacy, and that takes time. Hence, players will reach this status only later in their careers, when they’re already past their prime (in a physical sense, at least). The three “legends” in this study are all above 30, which means they probably don’t run like they used to back in the day. Consequently, when a player is in the middle of an intense game and then have to shoot a penalty, fatigue might come into play, and if it does, it probably weighs more on the older players than the young ones. Apparently, a study has been done on this, with a similar conclusion, but using a different justification for the results.
Overconfidence
This point and the following are conflicting, and I tend to believe this one more. When a younger player, who has not accomplished as much as a Cristiano Ronaldo, is selected to kick a penalty, he has a lot to lose and probably is eager to seize the opportunity. Take Kane for example, with 3 penalties scored in this World Cup. Chasing the scoring title and still building his legacy, Kane probably feels a bigger need to get each goal than Ronaldo would. After all, Ronaldo’s already won however-many Ballon d’Or titles and made a lot of money and had an amazing career and all that. If Kane misses a penalty against Iran, who knows how that will affect what people think of him. But if Ronaldo misses, he’s still Ronaldo, and he’s retiring in a few years anyway. In my view, that gets the younger player more focused in scoring, whereas the legend might not care as much, or be overconfident. And that overconfidence might just cost him the goal.
Another factor, which may be a bit of a stretch, is reluctance to use scouting. Just like coaches scout penalty kickers, they also scout goalkeepers. And those stats might be useful. Now, who do you think would have greater disregard for these stats: the legend, or the up-and-coming star?
More pressure
On the other hand, others prefer to claim that the legends actually have more pressure, which leads to tension, and a lower success rate. The argument is that since they have so much ‘to lose’, because they have multiple accomplishments, they fear their career will be stained if they miss the penalty, which affects their performance. Alternatively, a young player doesn’t feel as much pressure, because after a miss, he would still have a long career to go and leave the miss in the past.
While this theory makes sense, I tend to disagree. My reasoning is that older players have much more experience, and have been in stressful situations many more times than the young players. Hence, they likely are better at coping with the pressure and stress. To me, it seems more plausible that legends lack a little bit of stress which can act in your favor, rather than have extra amounts of it. Either way, you can choose for yourself.
Limitations and important considerations
To start off this section, I will address three important questions regarding the scope of the research.
- What’s the difference between World Cups and club games?
Because World Cups are so important and don’t happen often, they differ from club games in two main factors pertinent to this study. The first is the level of pressure. Professional players play games every week, so the level of stress in each game is not as high as it is in a World Cup game, which affects how players perform in penalties.
The second and most important point is that although there is scouting in every league, it is unlikely that club coaching staffs put in as much work into looking at penalty kickers’ footage and stats every week as coaching staffs of national teams do prior to and during the World Cup.
2. Why does it matter if the penalty is in-game or a shootout?
In-game penalties have a different level of pressure than shootouts. Also, before shootouts, goalkeepers are probably briefed about various players and their tendencies, which makes it more confusing for them to remember everything about each specific player. Also, if you’re a believer of the “overconfident” theory, that probably has no or much less of an effect on a shootout. That’s because that overconfidence probably diminishes when the game is on the line. In that case, the experience probably comes into play for the older players, that we would expect are more prepared for such a situation than the younger ones.
3. Why did you only study one World Cup?
In an ideal scenario, I would have gathered data from more World Cups, and potentially other top-level tournaments, like the UEFA Champion’s League. Why I did not do it is because: a. I wasn’t bothered to just yet, and wanted to release this while “Russia 2018” is still relevant. b. I intend on furthering this research later. c. This is more significant in this World Cup than ever. Scouting is becoming easier and more complete every year due to the growth of technology. Internet has developed a lot, and YouTube was only created in 2005. That means that for Modric’s 12 years “in the global spotlight”, all of these years happened after YouTube’s inception. But a player with the same 12 years in 2010, had 7 of those years “in the dark”, making the relevant years only 5, or less, because few people used YouTube in its early days. The legends of 2018 have had their highlights shared around the world since the beginning of their careers, unlike previous legends. Of course, YouTube is not the only way to scout, and National Team coaching staffs have access to more means than you and me, however, the growth of technologies that permit information sharing and processing over the years means that scouting is more important than ever now. So if you agree with me on my points made about scouting, the best way to prove of disprove the claims of this article would be to analyze the next World Cups, rather than the previous ones.
Now, let’s move on to the reasons why should disregard everything you just read and tell me to stop hatin’.
- Small sample size: 29 penalties is not enough to claim that some of the best players in history shouldn’t be kicking penalties. Oops.
- Subjectivity in the categorization process: What counts as being in the spotlight? Why 30 years of age? Why Top 100 and not Top 200? “This guy isn’t actually Top 2 in his team in my opinion!” You get the point.
- Definitions: My definition of legend might differ from yours. My definition of global spotlight might differ from yours.
- Categories: Are these the best categories available to test the hypothesis? Does my point system even make sense?
And there are probably many others, but I will not bother myself with listing them, since this article is already too long.
The point is, I did this for fun, and while I did follow some sort of method in my research, there are multiple reasons why you should take the results with a pinch of salt.
Either way, until proven wrong, I shall preach that you stop letting the likes of Messi kick penalties and opt for a younger guy instead. Preferably a good one.
Sources of information
404: APA/MLA citations not found
- Top 25 players & Top 100 players: https://www.theguardian.com/football/ng-interactive/2017/dec/19/the-100-best-footballers-in-the-world-2017-interactive
- Top 2 in National Team: Checked players on Guardian’s Top 100 players list (linked above) and TalkSport’s guide for National Team squads (https://talksport.com/)
- Player information: Wikipedia. Sorry to my high school teachers for this.
- Penalties: FIFA’s official website
Special thanks to my brother, for the help with the research and for knowing every football-related fact known to man.
