Left-footed professional footballers generally have an advantage when it comes to penalty kicks. But in the knockout rounds of major tournaments, things look different, as a team of researchers led by Oldenburg movement scientist Jörg Schorer has discovered.
According to the study, left-footed players award penalties significantly more often than right-footed players in the higher pressure knockout matches at European and World Championships. While the scoring rate of right-footed players in previous European Championship and World Cup main rounds only fell by just under nine percentage points compared to the previous rounds, the penalty success rate of left-footed players fell by 17.5 percentage points - almost twice as much. They converted an average of 69.2 per cent of their penalties in the main rounds (compared to 86.7 per cent in the previous rounds), while the right-footed penalty takers converted 75.1 per cent (compared to 84 per cent).
Together with colleagues from the universities of Münster, Kassel and Toronto (Canada), Schorer analysed almost 500 penalty kicks from past European Championship and World Cup tournaments. They initially found that the penalty hit rate decreases in the knockout round, by an average of eleven points from almost 85 per cent in the preliminary round to 74 per cent. According to the researchers, in addition to the pressure of the threat of elimination, this could also be due to the fact that at least five shooters, who are not necessarily all penalty kick specialists, have to compete in the penalty shoot-out in the main round.
The clear difference between left-footed and right-footed players could either result from a greater difference in quality between the preliminary and main rounds for penalties taken with the left foot or from possible learning effects among the goalkeepers. "We still see various fascinating starting points here to build on these initial results with further research," says Schorer. An analysis of all penalty kicks in the DFB Cup showed a similar, equally significant drop in performance for left-footed players in the penalty shoot-out compared to the penalty hit rate during the match.