The penalty was invented in England on February 14, 1891. It was the final minute of an FA Cup quarter-final between Notts County and Stoke City when a defender for County stopped a shot on the line along with his hand. Stoke had been awarded a free kick simply centimeters from the goal-line, and the goalkeeper, as was completely authorized at the time, stood proper in entrance of the ball. The Stoke participant, unable to do something aside from kick it straight at him, noticed his shot blocked in farcical circumstances.
At a subsequent assembly of the International Football Association board in Glasgow on June 2, 1891, a movement for a brand new penalty-kick rule was instructed by the Irish FA. The board accepted and, similar to that, many years of anguish and pleasure had been born. Sort of. The unique rule acknowledged that gamers might take a penalty “from any point 12 yards from the goal-line” and the keeper might advance at the very least 6 yards to put it aside. But, over time, that has been tweaked and finessed into what we all know and love/hate at the moment.
The chance of any penalty being scored is round 70 p.c. At the 2022 World Cup, 22 of the 29 in-game penalties awarded had been scored (76 p.c). Until the starting of this 12 months’s Euros, 88 penalties had been awarded in the competitors, with 62 scored (70 p.c). Penalty shootouts—launched into the Euros in 1976 and the World Cup in 1978—even have roughly the similar conversion fee. In World Cup shootouts, 222 penalties out of 320 have been profitable (69 p.c). In Euros shootouts, the conversion fee is just a little larger: 178 out of 232 (77 p.c).
But why should penalties be taken from 12 yards? Simple: That’s what the FA determined in 1891. And it’s probably by no means been modified, as a result of scoring seven out of each 10 penalties offers a great mixture of danger, reward, and drama.
Move the ball any nearer or farther away and the odds begin to tip too far a technique or the different. As John Wesson factors out in The Science of Soccer, making an allowance for air drag, a wonderfully directed “penalty” hit at 80 mph into the prime nook of the purpose might, in idea, defeat a goalkeeper from 35 yards. Move 10 yards or nearer to the purpose and the chance of scoring rises steadily. At 3 yards, it’s virtually one hundred pc.
Seemingly by fluke, 12 yards is just about the candy spot: Enough penalties go in to reward ability and good placement, and sufficient penalties are saved to reward good guesswork, analysis, and agility by goalkeepers. Of these 88 in-game Euro penalties awarded earlier than the 2024 match, solely 18 had been saved. England’s Jordan Pickford is one goalkeeper who has used previous habits of penalty takers and their most popular purpose placements to predict their future selections, holding this information on his bottle for reference.
For a striker, counting on physics to rating the excellent penalty is all about two issues: pace and route. At 80 mph, a goalkeeper has about one-third of a second to make a save. As that is related to their response time, the solely probability of it being saved is to guess appropriately the place it’s going. And that’s the place placement is available in. Research carried out by the University of Bath in 2012 discovered a “diving envelope” that any given keeper can cowl in the event that they push off in any route with most power. The chance of scoring inside the diving envelope is 50 p.c. The chance of scoring outdoors the diving envelope is 80 p.c.