There was punishment invented in England on February 14, 1891. It was the last minute of the FA Cup quarter-final between Notts County and Stoke City when a county defender stopped a shot on the line with his hand. Stoke were awarded a free-kick just centimeters from the goal line and the goalkeeper, which was perfectly legal at the time, stood right in front of the ball. The Stoke player, unable to do anything other than kick straight at him, had his shot blocked in farcical circumstances.
At next meeting On June 2, 1891, at the board of the International Football Association in Glasgow, the Irish Football Association presented a motion to introduce a modern provision regarding penalty kicks. The board approved the decision, and decades of anguish and joy ensued. Rather. The original rule stated that players could take a penalty “from anywhere within 12 yards of the goal line” and the goalkeeper could move at least 6 yards to save it. However, over time it was refined and refined into what we know and love/hate today.
The probability of scoring any penalty is approximately 70 percent. At the 2022 World Cup, 22 of the 29 penalties awarded in the match were scored (76 percent). Until the beginning of this year’s Euro, 88 penalties were awarded in the competition, of which 62 were scored (70%). Penalties – introduced in the European Championship in 1976 and the World Cup in 1978 – also have roughly the same conversion factor. In the World Cup penalty shootout, 222 of 320 penalty kicks were successful (69 percent). In Euro penalties, the conversion rate is slightly higher: 178 out of 232 (77 percent).
But why do penalty kicks have to be taken from 12 yards? Plain: that’s what the FA decided in 1891. And this has probably never been changed, as winning seven out of ten penalties gives you a good mix of risk, reward and drama.
Move the ball closer or farther and the odds will start to tilt one way or the other. As John Wesson notes in Football sciencegiven air resistance, a perfectly placed “penalty” shot into the top corner of the goal at 80 miles per hour could theoretically beat the goalkeeper from 35 yards. Get 10 yards or closer to the target and the likelihood of scoring continues to augment. At 3 meters it is almost 100 percent.
Apparently 12 yards is the sweet spot: enough penalties reward skill and good positioning, and enough penalties to reward the good guessing, research and agility of goalkeepers. Of the 88 penalties awarded in play before the 2024 tournament, only 18 were saved. Jordan Pickford from England is a goalkeeper who uses the past behavior of penalty takers and their preferred goal placements to predict their future choices, storing this data on his bottle for reference purposes.
For a striker, relying on physics to score the perfect penalty depends on two things: speed and direction. At 80 miles per hour, the goalie has about a third of a second to make a save. Since this is similar to their reaction time, the only chance to save him is to correctly guess where he is going. This is where the issue of seniority comes into play. Research conducted at the University of Bath in 2012 showed that: “dive envelope” which any goalkeeper can cover if they push in any direction with maximum force. The probability of hitting the dive envelope is 50 percent. The probability of scoring outside the diving range is 80 percent.