Helping goalkeepers save penalties

Posted by Ricki Sharpe on December 16, 2007  
Filed Under General, Selection, Work Behaviour

Only an economist could dream this one up. But, it is about work, and worthy of inclusion under our Work Behaviour category. After all, even sports people go to work. And, that’s what this story is about: helping football (soccer) goalkeepers be more productive at the office.

In soccer penalty kicks, goalkeepers choose their action before they can clearly observe the kick direction. An analysis of 286 penalty kicks in top leagues and championships worldwide shows that given the probability of kick direction, the optimal strategy for goalkeepers is to stay in the goal’s centre.

Goalkeepers, however, almost always jump right or left. In fact, analysis of the 286 penalty kicks showed that keepers saved 33.3 percent of penalties when they stayed in the centre, compared with just 12.6 per cent of kicks when they jumped right and 14.2 per cent when they jumped left.

The researchers believe the anomaly may be a reversed manifestation of what is known in behavioural economics as the omission bias. That is, people tend to suffer more regret after a negative outcome follows something they’ve done, compared with something they haven’t done.

In the case of keepers, the researchers surmised, they feel greater regret at letting a goal in after standing still in the centre, compared with jumping. If the ball ends up in the back of the net after they’ve jumped, at least it will have felt as though they had made a decent attempt to save it.

This account appeared to be supported by a survey of 32 top keepers. Of the fifteen who said their goal position would make any difference to how bad they felt about letting in a penalty, eleven said they would feel worse if they just stayed in the centre.

Of course, if goalkeepers around the world heed the lessons from this study and start staying in the centre of goal more often, presumably there will only be a brief period before penalty takers notice and start aiming more for the sides of the goal, thus balancing things out again.

Reference

Bar-Eli, M., Azar, O.H., Ritov, I. & Keidar-Levin, Y. (2007). Action bias among elite soccer goalkeepers: The case of penalty kicks. Journal of Economic Psychology, 28, 606-621.


Print This Post Print This Post

Similar Posts

Tags

.

Comments

Leave a Reply