With the knockout stages of Euro 2024 now underway, the daunting prospect for any team looms large - the penalty shoot-out. Penalties are often talked about as a game of chance, but is there actually a science to the art?
We wanted to be able to answer questions such as:
Where is the best place to direct your penalty for the highest chance of success?
Are penalty takers more likely to aim for a certain spot?
Which way is the goalkeeper most likely to dive?
Are the penalty takers later in the order more likely to miss?
Is the team that goes first or second more likely to win?
Do any other factors make players more or less likely to miss a penalty?
In order to answer these questions and more, we watched 112 penalty shoot-outs from major International and European tournaments dating back to 2010, totalling 1,144 spot kicks.
From these 112 shoot-outs, we then analysed the direction each penalty was aimed at, which way the keeper dived attempting to save the penalty, and whether the penalty went in, missed the target, or was saved by the goalkeeper.
The key findings from the analysis are:
73% of all penalties are scored, 17% are saved and 10% miss the target
Penalties aimed at the top middle of the goal are most likely to be missed
The best place to aim your penalty is straight in the middle of the goal, or in one of the top corners
Penalty takers are most likely to aim for the bottom left corner
Goalkeepers only stay in the middle for 4% of penalties, but save the penalty 29% of the time when they do
The third and 10th penalty in a shoot-out are most likely to be missed
Penalty takers are most likely to aim down the middle on the seventh penalty
Goalkeepers are most likely to stay in the middle on the fifth or ninth penalty
Players are more likely to miss a penalty following the opposition or a team-mate also missing a penalty
Penalties to stay in a shoot-out are more likely to be missed
Penalties to win a shoot-out are more likely to be scored
The team that goes second in a shoot-out wins 54% of the time
Where is the best place to direct your penalty for the highest chance of success?
The million dollar question when it comes to any penalty shoot-out - what is the best place to aim with your penalty? A game of chance to a degree, but there are definitely certain spots that yield a better chance of success than others, and one spot where as many penalties are missed as they are converted.
From the 112 shoot-outs, we tracked the direction each penalty was aimed at, breaking down whether the shot was aimed to the left, right, or down the middle, and if the height of the shot was to the bottom, middle or top of the goal.
Of the 1,144 penalties that we watched, 830 were scored, a conversion rate of 73%. Of the nine options for penalty direction, five of them were within 3% of the average. There were three spots however where the percentage of penalties scored was appreciably higher.
Aim straight down the middle for the best chance of success
The most successful spot to aim your penalty during a shoot-out was straight down the middle. Of the 66 penalties aimed here, 53 were scored, a conversion rate of 80%. This strategy takes a lot of balls however due to the potential embarrassment of the keeper not moving and making an easy save, with just 6% of all penalties taken aiming dead in the middle of the goal.
Going high into one of the corners also increases the chances of success. Penalties into the top left of the goal went in 79% of the time, and 77% of the time into the top right. The keeper didn’t save a single penalty aimed at the top corner so if you’re able to get it on target, there genuinely is “no saving that”.
Penalties aimed high and down the middle are most likely to miss
There was one spot that had a significantly lower conversion rate than the other eight options and that was penalties aimed at the top middle of the goal.
Out of the 70 penalties aimed straight into the roof of the net, 37 were scored and 33 were missed, a conversion rate of just 53%, significantly lower than the overall average of 73%.
Of the 33 misses, only 1 was saved with 32 going over the bar. So if you’re going to aim high, definitely aim for the corners not down the middle.
Penalties to the left are more likely to go in than to the right
Although going down the middle might seem like the safest option, it’s actually the direction with the lowest conversion rate, mostly due to players putting too much height on their penalties and missing the target.
But as we’ve just shown, straight down the middle without too much height is actually the most effective strategy.
Going to the left had a 75% chance of success compared to 72% aimed to the player’s right.
Shooting low is a safer option than going high
The height of the penalty shot generally doesn’t make too much difference to the success of the outcome. Although shots aimed at the top middle had a low conversion rate, this was balanced out by the above average conversion of penalties aimed at the top corners.
Where is the penalty taker most likely to aim in a penalty shoot-out?
Now we know the penalty directions most likely to lead to success or heartbreak, how do these align with where penalty takers are most likely to direct their penalties?
23% of penalties are aimed at the bottom left corner
The most common spot that players aim their penalties at is the bottom left of the goal, with nearly one in four penalties directed there. 18% aim to the bottom right corner of the goal.
Left footed and right footed players are both most likely to aim for the bottom corner of the side they approach the ball from, so bottom left for right footed players (23% of the time) but bottom right for left footed players (24% of the time).
However, left footed players were more likely to aim for the opposing bottom corner than right footed players. Left footed players went to the bottom left 21% of the time. Alternatively, right footed players aimed at the bottom right with 17% of their penalties.
Only 6% of penalties go straight down the middle despite having the best conversion rate
Despite having the best conversion rate, the middle of the goal was the second least used option for penalty takers at 6%, behind only the bottom middle at 5%.
Interestingly, despite the top left and top right corners having the second and third highest conversion rates respectively, they were only the fifth and sixth most used options. 10% of penalties taken went for the top left corner, while 7% went to the top right.
Given the low percentage of penalties aimed here compared to the percentage of them that are scored, penalties in the top corner seem to be an underused but very effective strategy for penalty takers.
17% of penalties are aimed at the middle of the goal
For goalkeepers trying to guess which side the penalty taker is most likely to go, 46% of the time it’s to the taker’s left. 37% of the penalties analysed went to the right and the taker went down the middle 17% of the time.
The direction of the penalty does change depending on if the penalty taker is left vs right footed. Left footed players will go their opposite side (right) 50% of the time, with right footed players going to their opposite side 49% of the time. Both sets of players are equally likely to go down the middle at 17%.
Nearly half of penalties are taken are aimed low
47% of the penalties analysed were kept low. By comparison, 31% were aimed at the middle third of the net, and 23% directed towards the top of the goal (the figures add up to 101% due to rounding).
Although only 19% of penalties were taken by left footed players, there was a noticeable difference in how likely a right footed vs left footed player is to take their penalty low vs high, with left footed players preferring to keep their penalty low, and right footed players more likely to go high.
45% of penalties from right footed players were aimed at the bottom third, rising to 52% for left footed players. Right footed players are also more likely to aim high, with 24% of their shots directed at the top third of the goal compared to 18% for lefties.
Where is the goalkeeper most likely to dive in a penalty shoot-out?
For the goalkeeper to stand any chance of saving a spot kick during a shoot-out, they need to be able to anticipate what the penalty taker is likely to do. From our analysis so far, we know that players are most likely to keep their penalties low and go to their left, with 46% of penalties during major tournament shoot-outs going to the left, and 23% to the bottom left.
Goalkeepers are more likely to dive to the left than the right
For the direction that the goalkeeper went, we just focused on the direction of their dive not the height due to it being difficult to accurately track how the dive changes in reaction to the penalty after it’s been taken.
From the 1,144 penalties analysed during penalty shoot-outs, the goalkeeper dived to the penalty taker’s left 50% of the time, compared to 45% to their right.
We also found that goalkeepers are much more likely to the player’s opposite side if they are left footed. Keepers dived to the right for left footed penalty takers 64% of the time, but only for 55% of all penalties taken by a right footed player.
Keepers only stay in the middle 4% of the time
Keepers are extremely unlikely to stand their ground in the middle of the goal. Despite the penalty taker shooting down the middle 17% of the time, the keeper stays in the middle just 4% of the time.
This likely accounts for why penalties aimed down the middle are only saved by the goalkeeper 11% of the time, and more likely to miss the target than be saved.
When goalkeepers do stay in the middle they save penalties 29% of the time
When the keeper does stay in the middle however, they are more likely to save the penalty than when they dive to either side. Admittedly part of the explanation for this could be due to waiting for the player to shoot the ball before deciding not to dive.
Although goalkeepers only chose to stay in the middle for 48 of the 1,144 penalties analysed, when they do stand their ground in the middle they save the penalty 29% of the time. By comparison, they save the penalty 19% of the time when they dive to the taker’s right, and 15% to the left.
Goalkeepers saved 17% of penalties during the shoot-outs analysed, meaning that on average they should be expected to save one of the five penalties taken before sudden death.
How does penalty behaviour change by the order during a penalty shoot-out?
As well as researching the most likely and most effective strategy for both the penalty taker and the goalkeeper during a penalty shoot-out, we also looked at how much the decision making of each changes throughout the shoot-out, as well as which positions in the order of penalties taken are most likely to experience the heartbreak of a missed penalty.
The third and 10th penalty in a shoot-out are most likely to be missed
Perhaps unsurprisingly, given the tendency for teams to start with one of their strongest penalty takers, the first and second penalties are the most likely to be converted from the first ten penalties prior to sudden death territory. Both slots had identical records with 83 scored and 29 missed.
It’s the third penalty in the shoot-out that appears to be the bogey position. On average, 73% of penalties are scored, but this drops down to 68% for the third penalty taken. The percentage then stays fairly consistent between 71-73% until you arrive at the 10th spot kick when the conversion rate drops back down to 68%.
Penalties after the first 10 are more likely to be scored
Many would probably expect the percentage of penalties scored to drop once you get past the first five penalty takers for each team and into the players that maybe weren’t overly keen to step up to the penalty spot, but it actually goes up!
Admittedly the sample size isn’t an even comparison, but from the 118 penalties taken after the first 10, 77% were scored, compared to 72% during the first 10 penalties.
Of the positions with at least 10 penalties included in the analysis, it was position 13 that proved to be an unlucky number for six out of 16 penalty takers that missed, the lowest conversion rate at 63%.
Position 14, possibly boosted by the higher percentage of missed penalties from the position beforehand, had the highest conversion rate with 14 out of 16 scored - 88%.
Although a small sample size of six, three and three respectively, every single penalty at position 18, 19 and 20 were scored.
Goalkeepers are most likely to save the ninth penalty
From all of the penalties that we analysed, we tracked which of the missed penalties were either saved by the goalkeeper or missed off target. The keeper managed to save 17% of the 1,144 penalties faced.
The ninth penalty in the shoot-out is the one keepers are most likely to save, successfully stopping 23% of them. The next most likely to be saved were the third and second penalty.
The least likely penalty in the shoot-out to be saved by the goalkeeper is the fourth penalty. The fourth spot kick in the shoot-out was only saved by the keeper 15% of the time.
You’d probably expect the percentage to increase as you get past the first 10 penalties in a shoot-out, but it actually drops from 18% for the first 10, down to 11% for any penalty taken in sudden death.
The eighth penalty is most likely to be missed off target
The only thing more heartbreaking than having your penalty saved is when you fail to hit the target with your penalty. While the goalkeeper managed to save 17% of all penalties analysed, a further 10% were missed off target.
The eighth penalty in the shoot-out is the spot kick most likely to be missed off target, happening 13% of the time.
The ninth penalty is the one most likely to be saved by the keeper, but it’s also the one least likely to be missed off target. Just three out of 83 penalties in the position nine spot were missed off target.
With most teams selecting one of their best penalty takers to go first, it’s no surprise to see the first and second penalty with a much lower than average missed off target, 7% and 6% respectively.
Although the chances of the keeper saving a penalty decreases after the first 10 penalties have been taken, the chances of a sudden death penalty being missed off target does increase, from 10% to 12%.
The seventh penalty is the most unpredictable in a shoot-out
Generally speaking, bottom left tends to be the most common direction for penalty takers regardless of their order in the shoot-out, with two exceptions. The third penalty is more likely to go bottom right, and the seventh is more likely to go middle left.
Of the first 10 penalties in the shoot-out, the sixth is the most predictable for keepers to anticipate, with 32% being aimed at the bottom left corner. The seventh penalty is the most unpredictable with the most common direction to the middle left only being used 18% of the time.
The goalkeeper is more likely to dive to the right on the third, sixth and 10th penalty
Which direction the keeper will dive is hard to predict with the most common outcome by order in the shoot-out peaking at just 54%.
They are however more likely to dive to the penalty taker’s left than their right for all penalties bar the third, sixth and 10th.
Penalty takers are most likely to aim down the middle on the seventh penalty
Arguably one of the “safest” strategies is to just aim your penalty down the middle and hope the keeper moves. As you can see from the table above there is a big discrepancy between how often the penalty taker shoots down the middle compared to how often the keeper stays in the middle of their goal.
17% of all penalties taken will go down the middle, but only 4% of the time does the keeper stay in the middle. From the 136 penalties aimed at the middle third of the goal, 69% were scored.
Depending on the order position of the penalty, this outcome for both the taker and the goalkeeper becomes significantly more likely.
For the penalty taker they are most likely to go down the middle on the seventh penalty, with this strategy being used for 25% of the time. It also happens 24% of the time on the ninth penalty and 20% on the fourth. It’s least likely to happen on the second penalty at just 12%.
Goalkeepers are most likely to stay in the middle on the fifth or ninth penalty
For the goalkeeper, they are most likely to stay in the middle on the fifth or ninth penalty.
On the first and 10th penalty, they only stay in the middle 2% of the time. They also dive to either side on 98% of all penalties taken after the first 10.
Keepers being more likely to stay in the middle on the ninth penalty could also be a contributing factor to the ninth penalty having the highest likelihood of being saved by the goalkeeper at 23%, vs the average of 17%.
Are high pressure penalties more likely to be missed?
Naturally, all penalties during a shoot-out have a high degree of pressure to them, but some have a little extra bit of pressure on the player stepping up to the penalty spot.
Specifically, we looked at how the chances of a penalty being converted after the previous penalty is missed, and for spot kicks that have the weight of either staying in the shoot-out or winning the game attached to them.
Penalties following a missed penalty are more likely to also be missed
When things get really interesting in a penalty shoot-out is when a penalty is missed and one team either gains or regains the advantage, adding some extra pressure to the next penalty taken.
Which is proven by how the percentage of penalties scored drops from 73% overall, down to 68% following a missed penalty, and 67% following your team-mate missing a penalty.
Not only are penalties following a miss more likely to be missed, the first team to miss a penalty has a significantly weaker chance of going on to win the shoot-out. The team that misses first only came back to win the shoot-out 23% of the time.
Penalties to stay in a shoot-out are more likely to be missed
The pressure on any penalty in a shoot-out is extremely intense, but arguably the penalties with the most pressure on them are those to either stay in the shoot-out, or those to win the shoot-out.
The psychology of having something to lose vs something to gain produces significantly different outcomes for these two types of pressure points during a shoot-out.
The conversion rate of penalties drops from the average of 73%, down to 69% for penalties to stay in the shoot-out. Of the 113 penalties taken to stay in a shoot-out, 18% were saved by the goalkeeper and 13% were missed off target.
In these high pressure moments, left footed players were far less likely to score than right footed players. Left footed players only scored 61% of their spot kicks to stay in the shoot-out, compared to 71% for right footed players.
However, when the spot kick is to win a shoot-out, the conversion rate of successfully scored penalties jumps all the way up to 82%, with only 10% saved by the keeper and 9% missing the target.
Although left footed players are more likely to miss a penalty to stay in, they are also more likely to score a penalty to win the game. 88% of left footed penalties to win were scored vs 81% for right footed players.
Once a team gets a penalty to win the shoot-out, regardless of whether they score or miss that penalty, it’s pretty much a guarantee for that team to win the shoot-out. There were 83 games where a team had a penalty to win the shoot-out. Only once did that team end up losing the shoot-out, giving those teams a 99% chance of winning the game.
What other factors can lead to penalty shoot-out success?
A few more quick fire insights that we found from our analysis:
A lot of people tend to assume that the team going first in the shoot-out has an advantage but we actually found that the team that takes the second penalty won 54% of the time.
Right footed and left footed players scored their penalties at a nearly identical conversion rate.
Green is the best colour to wear for outfield players. Outfield players in green shirts scored 85% of their penalties, way above the 73% average. They also had the highest win percentage, winning 73% of their shoot-outs.
Black was the unluckiest shirt colour for outfield scoring just 66% of their penalties. It was players in Blue shirts however that had the lowest win rate, just 39%.
Green was also the best colour for goalkeepers. Keeper wearing Green saved 21% of the penalties they faced, above the average of 17%. The unluckiest colour for goalkeepers to wear was yellow at a 11% save ratio.
Teams whose goalkeeper was wearing either green or black won 55% of their shoot-outs. The lowest win rate was for keepers in yellow shirts at 41%.
Players wearing their team’s away colours, scored their penalties at a slightly higher rate of 74% vs 72% for those in their team’s home kit.
Methodology
The analysis is based on 112 penalty shoot-outs from major International and European tournaments dating back to 2010, totalling 1,144 spot kicks.
From these 112 shoot-outs, we then analysed the direction each penalty was aimed at, which way the keeper dived attempting to save the penalty, and whether the penalty went in, missed the target, or was saved by the goalkeeper.
The full list of games analysed including video links to the shoot-out, and the complete analysis of the dataset can be accessed here.
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