On The Spot

In my haste to finish the last post, I rather rushed the penalty kick observation from Peter Webb, notably as someone kindly pointed out, that all penalty kicks are not equal. In the same way that Peter erred by including an opening match that was an elimination game with opening matches that were group games, his analysis of penalty shoot-outs is flawed. Peter wrote:

According to data I’ve collected over the years there is an 84.62% chance of scoring a penalty. (Sample taken from 1794 penalties taken in the Premier League). Forgoing complexity, you would expect the chance of winning a penalty shoot out to be fairly random at that scoring rate. However England’s record is way below 50% waaaaaaaaaaaaaaay below.

It should be clear that a penalty kick in a Premier League game is not the same as a penalty kick in a major tournament penalty shoot out. Not only do penalty shoot-outs force second and third choice players to take kicks, and sometimes fourth, fifth and more, but the pressure is ratcheted up enormously. Even penalties in the Premier League are not equal. Compare a first minute penalty at home for a top team versus a lower team with a 94th minute penalty in a drawn game in which a win keeps the team up / qualifies them for the Champions league / wins the Premier League. There's not too much pressure on the penalty taker when their side is 5:0 up etc.

In World Cup and Euro shoot-outs, I have the strike rate at 73.2% (271 scored from 370 kicks). Not surprising that percentage is considerably lower than that of Peter's Premier League sample. We're comparing apples and oranges here. Also worth noting is that (since 1998) the pre-match favourites have won 78.5% of World Cup shoot-outs, while the team shooting first has won 57.7%.

The country that has taken the most shoot-out penalty kicks is, as you might have guessed, England, who have converted 23 of their 35 winning just once (v Spain).

England and Italy are pretty close in terms of strike rate, with the Azzurri just ahead with 22 out off 33, but they have managed to win 3 of their 7 shoot-outs, while England have lost 6.

Germany, as you might have guessed, have the highest percentage for countries taking more than ten penalties, with 23 of 24 being scored, while England are the worst.

Of all teams, 100% scoring records are owned by the Czech Republic, Belgium, Paraguay, South Korea and Turkey, while Switzerland have a 0% record missing all three attempts - but their flag is a big plus...