By: Annabelle Ma

Penalty kicks are an essential part of a soccer match. In more than half of the World Cup title matches, the winner was determined by penalty kicks. The last time a Women’s World Cup concluded without any penalty shootouts was 2007; for men, it was 1978.

“So many games have been won by a single goal that has been a penalty,” said Robbie Wilson, a professor of motor performance at the University of Queensland. “It’s disproportionately more important than any other kick in the game.”

For the goalie to defend the penalty kicks, they need to block a 24-by-8-foot goal from a kick only a short distance away. Kicks are, on average, traveling at a speed of 70mph. So from the time a kicker’s foot contacts the ball, the ball takes 400 milliseconds to reach the goal—which is around the time it takes us to blink.

To make a move, the goalie first needs to register the visual information and send it to the brain’s visual areas to process. Then, this information needs to go to the brain’s motor cortex, which tells the goalie how and where to move. In total, this process takes around 200 milliseconds.

The dive itself takes another 500 milliseconds to complete if the goalkeeper wants to cover the post, said Greg Wood, a sport and exercise psychologist at Manchester Metropolitan University Institute of Sport.

If the goalie waited to see the direction of the ball once it’s kicked, they wouldn’t have time to block it, so they must start their movement before the kick. For these reasons, only 20 percent of penalty kicks were blocked.

To anticipate what the kicker would do, the goalie focuses on the kicker’s body movement before it happens. In one analysis of 330 penalty kicks, goalies dove an average of 220 milliseconds before the kicker kicked.

While it is hard for the goalie, it is also extremely difficult for the kicker. The kicker needs to figure out where to aim, how hard to kick it, and what strategy to use against the goalie.

Kicking faster makes it harder for the goalie to defend it but it also makes the ball land in a different place than where the kicker thought it would land. Kicking accurately comes with a cost of speed, allowing the goalie to block the ball a lot easier.

Kickers also face immense psychological pressure. Because the penalty kick is always hard to block, all the pressure is on the kicker.

“There’s no pressure of the goalkeeper,” Wood said. If they save one, they are “a hero,” since they weren’t expected to save it.”

To handle this intense pressure, many kickers do breathing exercises like the “sigh breath” and other pre-kick rituals.

In the World Cup, every little bit counts. A single penalty kick can win or lose the game.

Source: https://www.washingtonpost.com/wellness/2023/08/05/world-cup-penalty-kicks-psychology-brain/