Penalty Shots

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I was watching a soccer (football) game the other day, and the game was decided by a shoot out. Or are they called penalty kicks? (At least I think that's the term - I know it's the term in hockey - is the same term used in soccer?) What struck me was how shots are heavily slanted against the goalie. There were 10 kicks taken, and 9 were successful. The one that wasn't successful hit the top crossbar - it wasn't blocked by the goalie. It basically seems like the goalie has to guess where the kick will go to have any chance of stopping it. It seems like anything short of clairvoyance dooms the goalie to failure. Determining the outcome of a sporting event by which goalie is a better guesser doesn't seem very sporting to me.

This is very different from shoot outs/penalty shots in hockey - where there seems to be about a 50-50 split for success between the shooter and goalie.

It seems to me that what makes stopping a goal so difficult is the close proximity from where the kick takes place to the goal. (That and the obvious large size of the goal relative to the goalie, unlike in hockey where the goal is much smaller, and the goalie can block a significant portion of the goal by just standing there.) Is there a reason why the kicks are taken from such close range? It would seem that if the kick was moved a few meters back, that the extra fraction of a second it would take the ball to reach the net would give the goalie a fighting chance.

 

I'm pretty sure the term is penalty shoot out, or simply penalties.
(The full term being "kicks from the penalty mark")
Penalty kick (penalty) is a single kick.

As for the goalie being unable to do anything... It's true that penalties are more often successful than not, but not always. The mentality plays a big role there.
The goal keeper is, in my opinion, under less pressure than the player taking the shot. If he catches the ball, than he is a hero, if he doesn't, it's hard to take it against him. The players, especially attackers, are often expected to score.

In penalties, often the more psychologically stable team wins. (Or the one with a brilliant goalie.)

Some goal keepers specialize in defending penalties (saving them).
The legendary Russian goalkeeper Lev Yashin comes to mind.

I better stop here... since football isn't really my gender thing.

 

9/10 successful peno's? That's quite high, and not really indicative. However, it's MEANT to be hard to save a penalty. That's the whole point. The penalty is designed to punish bad tackles/behaviour. A penalty shoot out is slightly different, in that the whole point is to bring an end to a game. A peno shoot out only occurs if both 45 minute halves have been played, then around another 45 mins added minutes, and teams still can't be separated. Football is a fast, intense game, and players are cream crackered after that amount of time has been played! An end has to be brought to it. If the ball was brought back, it would be quite easy for a keeper to save it. The only chance a forward would have to score would be to bury it in the top corner, and even then the keeper would probably get it. A keeper should really be saving the ball when he can see where it's going.

As it is now, a lot of keepers try to read the players run up, watch videos of previous penalties the opposing team has taken, then try and guess where the penalty kicker will put it from all this. He doesn't just think "Ah, I'll go this way". It's a case of the keeper making an educated guess where to dive, and the forward trying to send the keeper the wrong way. This does sound hard for the keeper, however if the keeper could always see where the ball was going, he would have no excuse not to save it and shoot-outs could go on forever.

Still, it's not as easy as it looks to score to a peno, especially in a big game. The penalty taker has to be very mentally strong, and always be concious to mix and match where he places the ball, or keepers will get wise to him. The keeper is not expected to save it, the pressure is off, so when he does he's a hero. The very best keepers in the world are hard to score against. Some keepers seem to have a sense of where the player is going to place it, really good at judging from their run up. Like, where a player places his standing foot just before he's abou to kick the ball usually gives a good indication of where he's going to put it. On the same token, some players are really good at tricking the keeper.

No offence meant or anything, and I'm not trying to belittle your views, but I think you'd need to understand the game a bit more or play a little, then look at it again and I think you'd realise this is the only way a shootout could be.

However, having said that, it doesn't stop me shouting how unfair it is when England loses on penalties, YET AGAIN! Our players seem to have about as much mental strength as a dead mackeral... England have a reputation and a history of being rubbish at penalties.

 

No offense taken. I'm as familiar with the intracacies of European football as you are with American football. Here in the US, soccer is a kid's game, and as such, I have not played soccer since I was about 10 years old, and I'm sure the rules of soccer are quite different when you're 10 compared to pro soccer. So yeah, you're right about me not understanding the rules enough.

I also have to admit, that I'm not entirely sure if it was 9/10. All I remember for sure is there was only one missed shot, and I think each team had 5 attempts, which is why I said 9/10.

I also understand that with only one viewing, the penalty shootout I witnessed may not have been representative. Perhaps each team had relatively poor goal keepers (the score was tied at 3 which seems quite high for a soccer match).

I also agree that if the person taking the kick was moved far back, that it would be too easy for the goal keeper to stop the kick. Conversely, from this close it appears nearly impossible to stop the kick! I just thought that a happy medium could be acheived. But then again, you say that 9/10 is a very unusual state of affairs (especially considering the one miss hit the crossbar - it wasn't stopped by the goal keeper). If you typically had like 5-7/10 then maybe it wouldn't be as bad.

 

A finish like 9/10 happens, but not regular. Usually a few from each team blaze it wide or over.

I still can't work out how football is just a kids game in the US, but is the most popular sport elsewhere in the world. But that's another thread I guess, and also a deader horse than Red Rum.

 

Remember that penalty shootouts only happen when you really need a result and no other method is available.

Therefore only:
- in finals (when there has to be a winner), normal league games can just end in a draw.
- after playing some extra time first, at the end of which, the teams are still locked up.

The idea is to put pressure on the kickers, not the goalkeeper. The outcome is usually decided by one of the kickers losing his nerve and missing the goal completely, which seems impossible for a professional, but happens more often than you'd think.

 

That's easy to answer. Soccer players in the US make a fraction of the money that athletes in other sports make. So if you are athletically gifted, and don't want to move to Europe, you are much more likely to be drawn to another sport like baseball, basketball, football, hockey, tennis, etc., etc., etc., where you can make millions of dollars. The simplest answer is that the best athletes in the US don't play soccer.

Hmmm... And I thought it was a freak occurance that the guy hit the crossbar. But if missing the goal isn't that rare, I suppose hitting the crossbar happens with some frequency as well - and what I saw wasn't actually all that unusual!

 

Hah, no, hitting the woodwork isn't unusual.

But WHY? Footballers would get just as much money in the US if the sport were popular, it's catch 22. It's why the sport isn't popular that gets me.

I also don't get why many US players don't want to move to Europe to play. Players from allover the world move to Europe to play football and make millions.

 

Hmm I thought (I don't know much about the US) that soccer as you call it was in the rise over there. Ie via David Beckham or others, and AFAIK is the national team quiet good. Speaking about womens soccer there's no match to the US, so perhaps in 5-10 years soccer is big in the US? Didn't Pele play in USA also?

 

They've been saying soccer has been on the rise in the US since I was a kid. Here we are a couple of decades later, and soccer may be marginally more popular, but it's still a fringe sport in the US.

The US women's team is very good, but keep in mind that women soccer players make about the same amount of money as male soccer players, and since the only other sports where women make good money are things like tennis and golf, there is far less competition. Female basketball, baseball and yes football players get paid crap, so the monetary enticement to play another sport isn't there for women. Also in addition to most Americans viewing soccer as a kid's game, they also view it as an effeminate sport. Sorry, but it's true.

I'm sure Pele played in the US at times, but his legendary status came while playing for his native country of Brazil.

It's not really a catch 22 - it's more of a chicken and the egg type deal. Since the sport isn't popular fewer people participate in it, which means the best athlethes are playing other sports, which makes for less exciting soccer matches, which makes the sport less popular. I can only speculate on why it isn't more popular, and this is the only thing I can think of: There's only so many hours in the day to devote to sports, and soccer got to the dinner table too late. Basketball and Hockey are fairly popular sports in the US, but I don't follow them. NASCAR is wildly popular, but I don't follow that either. I only have time to follow a couple of sports, and I happen to have selected football (US) and baseball. It's also convenient that there isn't too much overlap in the two seasons, and that one of them is almost always going on. February-March is pretty much the only time one of the two sports isn't being played.

As to your second question - the people from all over the world who move to Europe to play soccer are most likely moving from countries where soccer is already popular. To use a US example - people from all over the world move to America to play baseball - but mostly from countries in Asia and South America where baseball is popular. The initial interest just isn't there. If there are 10 other sports where you can make more money and not have to move to a different continent to be a millionaire, you're much more likely to chose something besides soccer.

 

You see, more and more players from the MLS are moving to Europe to ply their trade. Off the top of my head, I could name half a dozen at least. Once that number increases to 12-20, then US will be able to field an international side that plays solely in Europe. At this point, they should really be able to hold their own against the top international sides. Once that happens, I can see the popularity of the sport increasing even more. Especially if more players like Freddy Adu appear, who I believe is now playing in Portugal and doing quite well. He's the type of player who sells tickets and puts bums on seats.

I know people have been saying this for years, but I can now honestly see football becoming really popular in the US in the next 10 years or so. There's plenty of reason to believe so. The MLS players just need to realise that they need to move to Europe. The US under 19's, 21's etc. perform well, but the full side are a bit rubbish. This indicates there's plenty of good young talented players in the MLS, but they seem quite happy to stay there and not progress, which shows a lack of ambition. These are now filtering through to the top European leagues more. Watch this space .

 

It is April 1st you know...

 

Well, the rest of the world disagrees . So long as the US is happy inside its excluded little bubble, that's fine .

 

That's a terrible argument! That's one of the reasons why some us think American Football is a bit tedious - because they play for 7 seconds then stop for 4 minutes to have a commercial and a Gatorade, then play for another 7 seconds. The games seem to be run more by the commercials than the action.

But I think Aldeth has the right of it. You can only watch so much sport. If soccer was to become more popular, then something else would have to become less popular. And what is that going to be?

That's just as likely as all that talk last year that American Football was going to become big in Europe. That will never happen unless they reduce the popularity of soccer.

Not quite. Soccer is not all that popular in New Zealand. OK, so we only have 4m people, but it's also not very popular in India. 1 billion people there would rather watch cricket than soccer any day.

 

Well even in China soccer is growing to be very popular

 

Well, we're not exactly in an exlcuded little bubble. We play soccer, we just don't happen to be as crazed about it as most Europeans, which may also contribute to the explanation as to why we aren't particularly good at it. Come to think of it, I don't think there is a US equivalent for some of the crazed fans you see at some European soccer matches. I don't think there's any sport in the US that the people are as passionate about as Europeans are about soccer. Sure, there are individual people who are that passionate like that, but there's no singlularly popular coast-to-coast sport that everyone loves.

Soccer has always been Europe's game. Sure, it's played the world over and it's very popular in lots of places, but it started in Europe, and in Europe it is still the be-all and end-all of sports, with nothing else even close. Even soccer-loving South America has more diversity in their sports, as they also love baseball.

I have to agree that I think culture plays a huge part in the popularity of sports as well. I'd imagine that if both soccer and baseball were introduced for the first time today, neither would become popular - people would consider both sports boring compared to the others out there. Americans watch and enjoy baseball because that's what we've always done. There's been organized professional baseball in the US for about 130 years now. I'm sure the first pro soccer leagues in Europe started back in the 1800s as well. I think it is reasonable to say that the reasons Europeans are into soccer are basically the same reasons that Americans are into baseball - because that's what you've always done.

When things have been around that long, they do get ingrained in culture - a tradition that gets passed on from one generation to the next. My father got into baseball because his father took him to games when he was a kid. Likewise, I started watching baseball because my father took me to games. I'm sure I'll take my child to baseball games as well (although he's not even a year old yet, so not this year) and so the tradition continues.

And the indoctrination doesn't stop there. While there are certainly lots of youth soccer leagues in the US, it's not nearly as all encompassing as little league baseball. Literally every single section of each city has it's own league for youth baseball. I grew up in a relatively small town of about 50,000 people, and we had FIVE DIFFERENT youth baseball leagues, all devoted to the 8-12 age group. Each individual league had between 4 and 6 teams in it, and each league has its own field, so that means there's also five different baseball fields scattered around a relatively small city. Essentially every boy (and a decent number of girls) play little league baseball. Conversely, there was one youth soccer TEAM for the entire city, and we had to travel to other nearby cities for away games. Given these realities, which sports do you think kids will continue to follow as they grow up?

 

There are other sports in Europe that enjoy popularity. It's just that football is the most popular, not the 'be-all and end-all'.

I'm sure that should Mr. Joe Bloggs American learn more of the intricities and delicacies of football, you wouldn't find it as boring. It's not a boring game when you understand it, at all, hence its immense popularity.

I agree on the culture thing, of course. I don't agree that football will NEVER get more popularity in the US. I think the wheels are in motion. It'll never take over American Football etc. but in a country the size of US, there should be enough room at the table to squeaze another chair in at the main table .

 

I should have phrased that better. Of course there are other sports that are popular in Europe. Golf and tennis spring immediately to mind. You would know better than me, so maybe I'm completely wrong about this. I was trying to say that if you took a poll among Europeans, a majority (and possibly a signifcant majority) would list soccer/football as their favorite sport.

No such majoirty exists in America for any sport. A recent poll showed up on ESPN in which they asked Americans what their favorite sport was. The largest vote getter was American football, with a total of just under 30% of the vote. (One very surprising thing about the poll was that NASCAR passed off baseball for 2nd place.)

What I meant about "be-all and end-all" is I believe soccer would enjoy much more than just a plurality of such a vote in many European countries, including England. Or maybe I'm totally wrong - I've never even been to Europe, much less lived there, so I'm basing this opinion just from what I hear people on these boards say, and the not-all-that-infrequent hooliganism you see at soccer matches that makes international news. I'm a total outsider, so perhaps perception is very different than reality.

I guess it would depend on what you would define as popular, and what time frame we are talking about. I have no idea where soccer ranks in popularity now. I found the poll on ESPN again, but it proved useless for this assessment. It only listed the top 10 favorite sports in America and soccer was not on the list. To put it into perspective, "Track and Field" came in 10th, with 2% of the vote. So soccer is less than that, and is presumably included in the "other" 3% category. So it could triple in popularity and would still be very small. Of course, just because less than 2% of people list it as their favorite sport, it is possible that signifcantly more than that LIKE the sport - it just isn't their favorite.

 

You'd be right in saying that the majority would choose football as their favourite sport. It enjoys immense popularity throughout most of the world, really. I'd say the basic simplicity of the sport saw to that years ago. All you need is a ball, that's it. Chuck a few jumpers down for posts, and away you go. It's very accessible. Very easy to play, extremely hard to play well, but fun whatever.

Football probably does get a bit of a bad press in America from what I feel from you. The only thing that tends to get news coverage is hooligan activity! I wonder if this stops more people getting involved in the sport as well.

However, MLS gets more money each year, more and more players are moving to Europe, and the players are getting better. It seems I know more about your own league than you guys do! America likes winners, which is why they're not interested in a sport they're **** at (well, part of the reason), but I think all the evidence points to the sport steadily gaining popularity in the US. Slowly, slowly, catchy monkey. Not that I really want it to like...