News

Fools goaled

Published 6 June 2012

Scientists could give England the edge when it comes to penalties in next month's European Football Championships.

Researchers at the University of Brighton and Liverpool John Moores University have shown that goalkeepers really are deceived by exaggerated run-ups and trick footwork.

The scientists investigated the psychology of how skilled and less skilled goalkeepers tell which way the ball will be kicked and their results have now been published in the British Journal of Psychology.

Images of a football player taking a penalty at timed intervals

Examples of the Obvious (A), Normal (B), and Deceptive (C) kicks used in the experiment. More similarities were found between the Obvious (A) and Deceptive (C) kicks than with Normal (B) kicks.

Dr Nick Smeeton, Senior Lecturer at the University of Brighton’s Chelsea School of Sports, said: “The psychology of the goalkeeper in a penalty shootout is largely unknown and, in particular, it is not known how goalkeepers can get fooled by the kickers into moving the wrong way. We set out to understand this issue and perhaps help better prepare goalkeepers ahead of a shoot out.

“First, we analysed the biomechanics of the penalty kick taker’s run up and kicking action. We then compared the biomechanics of a normal and obvious kick to those of a deceptive kick when they were trying to fool keeper into moving the wrong way. We also compared it to an obvious kick as a control in our experiment.

“Our results showed that deceptive kicks were more biomechanically similar to obvious kicks than they were compared to normal kicks. Specifically, we found that kickers exaggerated their movements in a similar way for the deceptive and obvious kicks, but not in the normal kicks. This told us that exaggeration is an important characteristic of deceptive kicks. However, this did not tell us why deceptive kicks are harder to read than normal kicks and certainly not why this might be for obvious ones.

“To understand this latter issue, we looked into the psychology of the goalkeepers when they were facing these kicks. We measured how accurately they were in reading the kickers shot direction and how confident they were in their decision. Confidence ratings are important because they can be used to give us an idea about how conscious a decision is – conscious decisions are often made slowly which is not desirable in a penalty shootout.

“We found evidence to suggest that goalkeepers’ decisions were, in fact made more consciously when facing deceptive kicks compared to normal kicks; with this result also been reported for obvious kicks which suggested to us that exaggeration in the penalty kickers’ movement was fooling the goalkeepers into making more conscious decisions. From the kickers’ perspective, this deception may increase their chances of scoring.

“If England end up in penalty shoot outs during Euro 2012, then perhaps practicing penalty kicks designed to fool their opponents may be the way to go.”

Smeeton, N.J. and Williams, A.M. (2012) The role of movement exaggeration in the anticipation of deceptive soccer penalty kicks British Journal of Psychology . ISSN 2044-8295