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The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

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Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#41

Post by JamesSwift »

reitzensteinm wrote: post #32
alexpotato wrote: post #30

The book Soccernomics [0], has a whole chapter dedicated to both the psychology and game theory of penalty kicks. Long story short: - Let's simplify to the options being: you kick either left or right - The goalie has to pick which side BEFORE you kick b/c by the time you kick, it's too late for the goalie to react - Your basic strategies are: always left, always right, alternate left/right or try to be as random as…

Couldn't you just memorise a few random decisions before each match? You don't need to generate it in the moment.

Or just flip a coin before you line up for the kick

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#42

Post by esalman »

At the very highest level of soccer (or any game for that matter), it is not down to physical skills anymore. It becomes a matter of mental games- reading your opponents, making anticipations and react in the moment under immense pressure. The only sport in which I progressed the most is FIFA online "weekend leagues"; it is easy to reach "Gold 2" but after that you have to master reading the game and your opponent.

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#43

Post by wastedhours »

smcl wrote: post #27
jonplackett wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I still remember the pain of this (and many other england) shoot outs. Apparently it was team policy back then not to practice penalties . No wonder we always lost. It wasn't until Gareth Southgate took over as england manager (who infamously had his terrible semi final penalty saved in Euro 96) that we started practicing - and guess what, we won the next penalty shoot out. Who'd have thought?

Good grief that is bonkers. I wonder if it was justified like - if you prepare for penalties the players will aim for that instead of trying to win in 90 minutes or in Extra Time. Like an old antiquated training strategy I read about where a team would train without a ball, so that they’d be more hungry for it during the game. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be an England fan. With Scotland it’d be an achievem…

The sad thing about being an England fan over the last few decades has been managers pandering to the egos rather than playing the best strategy. Can never forgive the run of managers who decided playing Gerrard and Lampard next to each other every match was a great idea.

Southgate in that regard does feel like a small breath of fresh air.

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#45

Post by gostsamo »

alkonaut wrote: post #16
gostsamo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It awards penalty kicks even for unintentional touches of the ball, as far as it is not a ricochet. Before that the hand had to be in unnatural position to signal intend by the player.

Absolutely ridiculous. Unless you want defenders to run around with their hands on their backs, what's the point? Were teams ever really robbed of goals and titles by unintentional handball? Now there will be titles awarded to those winning the penalty lottery instead. I expect this will be changed back in the coming seasons.

O, yes, handplay has been crucial in many matches and the correctness in awarding a kick or not is a favorite passtime for many fans discussing historical games.

My suspicion is that it will open the game because teams would prefer to attack and keep the ball away from the danger zone. If penalty kicks become to successful though, FIFA might decide to make it more difficult for the kicker instead of going back to the previous chaos. Examples are:

1. if the goalkeeper reflects the ball, nobody can approach it and try again.

2. the goalkeeper could be allowed to leave the goal line and meet the ball.

3. the goals could be made narrower.

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#46

Post by Someone »

ape4 wrote: post #33

The goalie always stands in the middle, I wonder if it would be helpful if he changed it up.

Some do stand a bit outside center, to lure the kicker to pick one side. You can’t do that by a long distance, though. The goal is 8 yards wide, so if you move a yard from the center, one goal post is 5 yards away. That leaves too large an opening.

Luckily, you don’t have to do it by a large distance. https://repository.lboro.ac.uk/articles/Imperceptibly_off-ce...:

“We asked whether a goalkeeper can, by standing marginally left or right of goal center, bias a penalty taker implicitly to kick to the side with greater area, thus allowing the goalkeeper to dive in that direction to make a save. We show that the penalty taker is unlikely to be mindful that the goalkeeper is off center, but nevertheless can identify the side with greater area and will be more likely to direct the penalty kick to that side than to the other side.”

https://journals.plos.org/plosone/article?id=10.1371/journal...:

“implicit influences of the goalkeeper’s position on goal side selection were overridden by the (conscious) perception of the direction of the goalkeeper’s dive, but only if the penalty takers deliberately monitored the goalkeeper’s action and the goalkeeper committed early enough for penalty takers to respond. In all other combinations of penalty kick and goalkeeper strategies more than 60% of the kicks were directed to the side of the goal with more space”

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#47

Post by Someone »

alkonaut wrote: post #16
gostsamo wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It awards penalty kicks even for unintentional touches of the ball, as far as it is not a ricochet. Before that the hand had to be in unnatural position to signal intend by the player.

Absolutely ridiculous. Unless you want defenders to run around with their hands on their backs, what's the point? Were teams ever really robbed of goals and titles by unintentional handball? Now there will be titles awarded to those winning the penalty lottery instead. I expect this will be changed back in the coming seasons.

I guess rules will be changed, too, but some pro footballers also are fairly good actors, and can intentionally place their arms in the ball’s trajectory so that it looks unintentionally (one way to get there is by not moving it out of the way)

What surprises me is that, for the VAR, they didn’t do what was done in other sports (tennis, field hockey, cricket): only review actions on request by a team (or the referees), and give each team a limited number of times their requests can be rejected.

IIRC, American football has that now, too, after a period in which about every play got reviewed.

Re: The Cat-and-Mouse Game of the Modern Penalty Kick

#48

Post by jonplackett »

wastedhours wrote: post #43
smcl wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Good grief that is bonkers. I wonder if it was justified like - if you prepare for penalties the players will aim for that instead of trying to win in 90 minutes or in Extra Time. Like an old antiquated training strategy I read about where a team would train without a ball, so that they’d be more hungry for it during the game. I cannot imagine what it feels like to be an England fan. With Scotland it’d be an achievem…

The sad thing about being an England fan over the last few decades has been managers pandering to the egos rather than playing the best strategy. Can never forgive the run of managers who decided playing Gerrard and Lampard next to each other every match was a great idea. Southgate in that regard does feel like a small breath of fresh air.

Considering Southgate single-footedly ruined the year 1996 for me, it is not without difficulty that I agree.

The last world cup was a lot of fun to watch. Him winning England's first penalty shootout (I think ever?) felt like the circle of life completing.

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