English Football Players are not as Bad at Kicking Penalties as Commonly Assumed

Abstract

the previous performance of the english men's national football team in penalty shootouts has led to the widespread stereotype that english football players are particularly bad at scoring penalties. Research has proposed possible reasons behind this alleged "penalty curse". When looking at these reasons, the question arises if english football players per se have trouble scoring penalty kicks. therefore, we analyzed the performance of a large sample of penalty takers during all World-and european championships (N = 696) and, additionally, in some of the highest European leagues over a ten-year period (N = 4,708). The results reveal no significant differences between the success rates (on average between 71-79%, depending on the type of penalty kick and on the type of competition) of penalty takers from different nations. Therefore, we conclude that English players perform as well as players from other nations and that poor performance in penalties lay beyond the factor nationality. Penalty kicks play an important role in association football (soccer) and will likely play an important role in upcoming events like the UEFA European Championship 2021. UEFA introduced penalty shootouts to major tournaments in 1976 (FIFA followed in 1978) as a means of deciding matches in the knockout phase of major tournaments when the score is a draw at the end of the match. These shootouts have decided 18 UEFA European Championship matches including one for winning the tournament (1976) as well as 30 FIFA World Cup matches including two for winning the World Cup trophy (1994 and 2006) and can be considered as the pinnacle of high-pressure performance in football 1,2. Pertinent to the present research, studies have suggested that not all nations perform equally well in these high-stakes penalty situations 3-5. One specific result from this research has received an extraordinary amount of public attention, which has led to a well-known stereotype: English football players are extremely bad at shooting penalties. It is, in fact, nearly impossible to find opposing opinions about this stereotype in the media, and even acknowledged football experts in television commentaries openly talk about how bad England are at penalties-an opinion that vast amounts of newspaper and magazine reports seemingly support 6-9. As is often the case with stereotypes, there may be some truth behind it. A brief look at the numbers of the penalty shootouts involving the England national team does in fact show a negative balance. Since 1978, the England men's national team has only won three out of the nine shootouts they participated in (losses: World

English Goalkeepers are not Responsible for England’s Poor Performance in Penalty Shootouts in the Past

“…Our reasoning for the importance of this research follows that of Brinkschulte, Furley, and Memmert [4], by pointing out that there is evidence showing the impact of stereotypes on performance in sports, even if those stereotypes are not actually true. A phenomenon that can be considered as being of particular relevance in this regard is the so-called stereotype threat [2].…”

“…Our methodological approach followed that of Brinkschulte et al [4]. First, we sampled all penalty kicks taken in penalty shootouts and during the matches in European and World Cup matches since 1976.…”

“…In all tournaments, we distinguished between performance in penalty shootouts and performance in in-game penalties. We used the same nations as previous research on cross-national penalty analyses [4]. In the analysis, we directly compared the success rates of goalkeepers from England, Germany, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, Brazil, Argentina, and France as they can be considered some of the biggest football nations and, in addition, are amongst the countries with the highest number of goalies in the analyzed competitions.…”

“…Given the immense public interest in professional sports, it is not surprising that there are many public opinions and stereotyping in sports (e. g., [3]). For example, a recent study [4] did not nd evidence for the wildly held stereotype that English soccer players are bad at kicking penalties. Nor did this research nd evidence for other commonly held stereotypes, for instance, that players of some nations like Germany perform extraordinarily well in penalty kicks.…”

“…Since the penalty shootout was introduced to major international tournaments in 1976, the Three Lions have only won three (World Cup in 2018; European Championship in 1996; Nations League in 2019) out of the nine shootouts they participated in (losses: World Cups in 1990, 1998and 2006European Championships in 1996, 2004, and 2012). Hence, it might not be that the penalty kickers of England were responsible for this subpar performance [4], but the English goalies instead. For this reason, this study aims to determine whether the success ratios of goalkeepers in regard to their nationality differ from each other or from the overall average.…”