By: Ken Niu

With tensions high, it can be easy to miss a penalty. A penalty could be the most important goal of a game. With pressure like this, the kicker may hesitate and cost the team the game.

The importance of penalties is demonstrated as the most recent men’s World Cup was won on penalties with Argentina scoring 4 and France scoring 2. Even more recent, USA’s women’s team lost to Sweden 5-4 on penalties.

The goalkeeper has less pressure on them because they are not expected to save the goal. This means all the pressure is on the player, and that will affect their ability to do well.

It is extremely hard for a keeper to save a penalty. According to the Washington Post, it takes 400 milliseconds for the ball to leave the kicker’s foot and travel into the goal. It takes 200 milliseconds just for the keeper to react. Then it takes 500 milliseconds for the keeper to dive to cover the whole goal.

The odds are heavily stacked against the keeper, but the kicker could make a mistake. Both the keeper and the shooter can play mind games to confuse each other. The kicker might position their body to look like they are shooting one way, but then shoot the other. This comes at the risk of messing up since they are not in the ideal position to kick in that direction.

The goalie can influence which way the player shoots by standing towards one side of the goal, or distracting them by making movements like waving their arms in the air. Standing to one side of the goal will make the player more likely to shoot to the opposite side, therefore making the shot more predictable. Waving arms will influence the kicker to shoot toward the goalkeeper, straight into their arms.

Also, to increase the chance of making a save, the keeper will dive before the kicker shoots. Sometimes this is dangerous because if the keeper dives too early, the kicker will have time to react and redirect the shot away from the keeper.

Penalties are scored 80% of the time, but that 20% loss happens because players need to deal with pressure and other distractions. This will cause them to make mistakes that they might end up regretting.