Game Theory of Penalty Kicks
When you think about it, there is little simpler than a penalty kick. A ball is placed a prescribed distance from the goal. One player lines up with the objective to kick the ball into the goal. Another player lines up with the objective to prevent the ball going into the goal. Sounds simple enough, right?
Well, like most things in life, if you give smart people enough time to analyze simple things they can make them quite complex. Ignacio Palacio-Huerta is a smart guy. He’s an economist at Brown University in the United States and he has applied Game Theory to penalty kicks.
Gelf magazine has a lengthy and interesting interview that will make you feel smarter than the friend sitting next to you the next time you watch a game where there is a penalty kick or penalty shootout.
While you are there, check out the interview with our very own referee blogger Aaron, who sticks up for the officials in this year’s World Cup.
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Comments
By Os Davis | July 1st, 2006 at 8:34 am 
And check this out. In February 2003, USA Today did a series of articles on the ten most difficult feats in sports. Blocking a penalty shot ranked — if you can believe it — ninth.
The full list is here:
http://sports.candyham.com/2006/07/01/the-ten-most-difficult-feats-in-sports/
Posted from 
Hungary
By Zé | July 1st, 2006 at 3:22 pm In a tournament so important and so short as a WC, logistics play a great role. In Penalty kicks, knowing the “strongest” spot of a given player’s penalty kick can be the difference between defending the kick or suffering a goal.
Most (all?) national teams do some research in advance to know where each player from the opposing team is likely to kick, so GKs usually go to the match knowing it in advance. So a player can’t just kick it to his “best” corner - he needs enough variation on penalty kicks so he won’t be easily cancelled by the GK.
Posted from 
Brazil
By Fredi | July 1st, 2006 at 3:57 pm I am an enemy of having PK’s decide games. I think that most fans would agree that sometimes the team who played the best match loses when it to PK’s. But until the rules are revised, this will still be the method of deciding the games. So, if I were coaching a team I would emphasize on my players to practice penalty kicks in the following manner:
1. Line up directly in front of the theoretical center of the goal area, so the keeper has to keep guessing where the ball is going to go;
2. Practice with both feet, so you are equally efficient in scoring;
3. Do not lead off with the same foot when sprinting towards the ball before kicking it, change up to confuse the keeper;
4. Practice 10 different ways to kick the ball at the goal;
5. Kick the ball to an area where the keeper has to extend fully in order to try and block it. This kick needs to be placed surgically at the lower and upper extremities of the goal area.
If there is a “movement” out there considering changing the rules of the game to remove the PK shootout, I’m all for it. I personally would like to see the teams play a three game series, with the best team winning 2 out of 3 games to advance.
Posted from 
United States
By metin | July 3rd, 2006 at 7:14 am It’s horrible that do-or-die elimination matches in arguably the most important sports tournament of the world have to be decided by penalty kick shootouts, and not by playing the game . . . that some call not boring.
And what makes the rulebook-writers think that tacking 30 more minutes of overtime (with the same rules and regulations) is really going to change anything if 90+ minutes of play hasn’t produced a clear winner.
So, in the interest of fair-play or the typical ‘American’ intervention, I’d like to propose some changes to make the game more enjoyable for all of us, instead of playing to the whims of the old guard.
(1) After 90+ minutes of play, send both of the goal keepers to the locker room, leaving each team less 1 player, and with no ‘goal keeper-only’ saves, involving the use of hands and body, thereby truly making it a ‘foot’ball game.
(2) As soon as one of the teams scores, the game comes to an end. Sudden Death. No bottom of the ninth heroics. First come, First serve!
(3) If no goal is scored after 15 minutes of overtime, another set of players (decided by each coach as to whom) from each team is taken out, and this goes on every 15 minutes, till there are only 2 players (1 from each team) left. Scoring a goal into an empty net with only one player to tackle should be pretty easy. (Just tell that to Argentina - 1 for 3 in the shootout vs Germany.)
(3b) . . . if not, short of forcing the coaches to enter a smoke-a-thon to see who can finish an entire pack of cigarettes the fastest, neither team should advance, and the next round opponent gets an automatic bye. This will surely eliminate the intentional defensive stance some teams display in the waning minutes of the game hoping to deliver the goods via the footwork of their star kickers.
Anyway, these changes would make the game more enjoyable and there would be no crying foul because a penalty kick goes amiss.
Posted from United States
By Ethan Pearl | April 30th, 2007 at 10:25 am I am a middle school student at woodward middle school and I was wondering if I could barrow the picture images.worldcupblog.org/www/leh.jpg
for a school project, and it would be online for about a mounth
Posted from United States
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