How difficult is a penalty penalty to prevent?

Up to now, there have been 6 penalty penalties in matches that took place at the 2014 World Cup in Brazil and all of them have been turned into goals. According to statistics, the English Premier League last season only saw 14 of 87 penalty kicks missed or blocked.

What makes the penalty shoot-out difficult to defend? The answer, the experts, lies in the size of the deception is very large of the subject, a short time for a goalkeeper to react and psychological tricks.

Andrew Lane, professor of sports and study at the University of Wolverhampton (UK), said, if a player hit the ball hard enough, the goalkeeper almost had no chance to stop."Penalty penalties are all about stress control . Players need to re-learn kicking skills and practice it in stressful situations. They need to make decisions and stick with decisions. " said Mr. Lane.

However, there is still a chance and a way for the goalkeepers to successfully prevent a penalty kick. A study by Brunel University in London, UK discovered, world-class players have the ability to judge opponent's actions up to 80 milliseconds before they launch.

This means, when England goalkeeper Joe Hart stares at German player Thomas Muller, his brain will automatically detect small details on how to run the momentum of the German striker, helping Revealing the direction the player will shoot.

The striker is arguably more advantageous than the goalkeeper in a penalty penalty.(Artwork: coachup.com)

In fact, researchers who collaborate with the Football Association discover that skilled players can judge opponent's actions up to 70% of the competition time, while the odds are on the players. less experienced players are only 52%. The smallest disparity in judgment time can also make a difference in success - failure, according to Professor Mark Williams from Brunel University (UK). This expert said that the result of the long training process and the experience on the field helped the top players develop recognition skills by feeling very well, helping them to correctly judge What the opponent will do before the action actually happens.

The professional goalie seems to be spending more time studying the faces of penalty scorers and can guess the opponent's foot movement a few seconds before he touches the ball.

The research reinforces the discovery of a sports science study conducted by ESPN on penalty kicks at the 2010 World Cup in South Africa. This work has shown that goalkeepers have the ability to predict the ball direction up to 57% of the time. However, because the time for the goalkeepers to respond is too short, they can only prevent 22% of these free kicks.

The reason for this phenomenon is, there is no psychological preparation of the goalkeeper to be effective, if the kicker knows what he is doing. On average, the ball in the penalty kick moves at a speed of about 112km / h. With a penalty point 11 meters away from the goal, this means the ball will take less than half a second to reach the net. That makes the goalkeeper about 700 milliseconds to see which direction the ball will fly in and decide how to jump or move the body in that direction.

In fact, the goalkeeper takes 1 second to observe the ball, then jump in its direction. If this way, the ball will definitely be in the net and the goal is calculated for the opposing team. To overcome this challenge, what most goalkeepers do now is to start jumping and moving the body before the opponent hits the ball. The fact led to some players, such as Brazil's Neymar striker in the recent match against Croatia, changing the way he ran, tricking the team goalkeeper to move before kicking the ball, then kicking in another direction .

The short time for a goalie to react and start handing out is synonymous with penalty kicks with great advantage. But this is not only because of the biological characteristics of the human body, but also because of the size of the goal. A football goal is 7.3 meters wide and 2.4 meters high, giving it an area of ​​17.52m ² . To control the area of ​​the goal area, bigger than this cargo container is not easy.

In addition, a study by the University of British Columbia (Canada) also discovered, "game theory" also plays an important role in deciding the penalty result. According to game theory, every opponent in any context, from war to chess matches, follows predictable strategies to deceive each other.

Both the goalie and the free-kicker of your team must make a decision at the same time because everything happens very quickly. They have to choose to move to the left, right or in the middle. Every player is usually good on this side than the other side and the analysis data shows that most of them often penalize penalties for not agreeing to avoid being "caught" by the goalkeeper. This requires the goalkeeper to have a balanced psychological strategy, sharp judgment and of course a bit of luck to prevent a successful free kick.