Why do the world’s best footballers take such bad penalties?

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DOHA/LONDON: The chances of penalties at the World Cup in the next two days are slim. At least one of the last nine tournaments has reached the quarter-finals, the peak being in 1986 when three of the four games ended on penalties.
However, few of them can have performed as poorly in a series of penalties as they did in the round of 16 in Qatar. Japan went out with a whimper as the Croatian goalkeeper Dominik Livakovic tame effort saved Takumi MinaminoKaoru Mitoma and Maya Yoshida were all denied by Livakovic.
Spain coach Luis Enrique was firmly in the camp “it’s not a lottery” and said ahead of his side’s round of 16 clash with Morocco that he had told the players to take 1,000 penalties in training when playing with their clubs.
They either didn’t listen or it didn’t work as the first three players who tried all didn’t convert. Pablo Sarabia, who came on for the job at the end of the game, hit the post while Carlos Soler and Sergio Busquets had conveniently saved their tame efforts to send through Morocco.
Also eliminated on penalties by Russia four years ago, it was an inexplicable feat by a side featuring some of the sport’s most technically gifted players.
The most notable aspect of both shootings in 2022 was the shockingly poor quality of the kicks. The six saved penalties of the losing teams were all shot without much effort and not directly into the corner, a strategy that scratched the heads of fans and pundits alike and gave the goalkeepers easy victories.
Data company Nielsen Gracenote has analyzed every penalty shootout at the last five World Cups, including Qatar, and found that shooting to the right (50%) or left (68%) has the lowest success rate – and even those numbers don’t factor in how far behind right or left.
Unsurprisingly, shots to the top, whether wide or central, have a 100% conversion rate — 20 attempts in this study. While going high may seem riskier, only five penalties have hit or gone over the bar in that time, while seven have hit a post or missed the goal.
Former England striker Alan Shearer had a brilliant penalty record, which he achieved by usually smashing the ball high into a corner so even if a goalkeeper jumped on it he had no chance of saving it.
BODY LANGUAGE
So why do so many players seem unable to substantiate their technique to aim for a small but productive top corner, going deep instead? “The margin for error is just a little bit smaller when you’re aiming for that part of the target,” said Dr. Matt Miller-Dicks, Senior Lecturer in Skill Acquisition at the University of Portsmouth, told Reuters.
“You can’t take a penalty too low because the ground is there, but of course you can take it too high, so it’s kind of a safety net.
Body language and confidence also play a role – with the Japanese players all looking almost scared as they pitched their efforts. The increasing use of stuttering attempts and attempts to outwit the goalkeeper often seem to do more harm than good.
“I felt that on some of the worse penalties in those two shootouts, it was maybe a case of players approaching quite slowly in advance, maybe hoping the goalkeeper will commit to one side, but then it didn’t did and the taker doesn’t get anywhere near the corner and the keeper makes what looks like a pretty comfortable save,” Miller-Dicks said.
Obviously the psychological pressures of the situation are heavier on some than others, but Miller-Dicks says the damage can be done long before the player actually places the ball in place.
“Research shows that some of the things they struggle with aren’t so much the kick itself as standing on the centerline, waiting and stepping up to take the kick,” he said.
“If you’re not prepared for that moment, then you might have doubts about what you’re going to do and maybe change where you’re going to put a kick.
“So I think preparing the penalty taker isn’t necessarily just practicing penalty shootouts, it’s stepping up. National teams or clubs have a sports psychologist and they have to help prepare the players psychologically for that moment.”

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