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Rethinking The Game (RTG) is a series of blog posts on changing minor aspects of the game of football.  You may wish to read the introduction to the series if you missed it.

Rethinking The Shootout Index: [Part 1] [Part 2] [Part 3] [Part 4] [Part 5]

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Some of the most memorable moments in recent football history have occurred during the penalty shootout.  Who can forget the Divine Ponytail, Roberto Baggio, sinking to his knees in ‘94?  Or David Trezeguet breaking French hearts by hitting the bar and the goal line in the last World Cup final?

England deserve a whole chapter in the story of the penalty shootout, starting with Stuart Pearce and Chris Waddle, then on to David Batty and Gareth Southgate.  The biggest names in England’s current squad - David Beckham, Steven Gerrard, and Frank Lampard - have all missed crucial penalties in tournament shootouts.   Most recently, the 2008 Champions League final gave us the Cristiano Ronaldo’s unlikely miss, followed by the John Terry Slip.

But if the event is so memorable and dramatic, why is ‘dreaded’ the most common adjective applied to the penalty shootout?  It’s truly a car crash moment - nobody wants to see it, but you can’t look away.

To trot out a cliché, the form book goes out the window when it comes to penalties.  You can largely forget about the relative pedigrees of the players or the coach, the results leading into the match, and even the events of the preceding 120 minutes.

I can illustrate this with the help of the bookies.  The UK bookmaker Blue Square offered odds on the winner of each of the three Football League play-off finals in May 2008, as follows:

They gave Hull a 59% chance of beating Bristol City if there was a result inside of 90 minutes.

They gave Leeds a 63% chance of beating Doncaster if there was a result inside of 90 minutes.

They gave Stockport at 56% chance of  beating Rochdale  if there was a result inside of 90 minutes.

Yet in all three cases, they rated the result as a 50-50 lottery if it went to penalties.

The central issue here is that the result of a penalty shootout is utterly unpredictable - more unpredictable than the match itself.  While this provides excitement, it leads to a number of problems - as we’ll see in future posts.

You may be thinking about Germany’s envious record in shootouts as evidence that there is an element of skill involved.  It may be true that some teams possess an advantage, but if they do, it’s not football skill they’re displaying but nerve and temperament.  Is that what we want to use as a tie-breaker - as a way to settle a World Cup final?

On the other hand, you’ll find long streaks of heads and tails if you toss a coin just a few dozen times.  That doesn’t mean that you’ve mastered the coin.  It’s just statistically inevitable that this will occur.  The stereotype of the German personality provides a convenient explanation for their success, but it could also be attributed to dumb luck.  After all, Saudi Arabia have won all four of their penalty shootouts, but as national stereotypes go, they have little in common with the Germans.

So if penalty shootouts are so unpredictable - coin tosses with the veneer of football skill - why do we use them to pick a winner in a tight contest?  Could there be a better way?

[Link to Part 2]

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