The 2024 Olympics are coming to an end. They were great! Here’s my suggestion for next time:
After all the events are over and the medals have been given out, do a series of events with the medal winner of sport A, competing against the medal winner of sport B, doing sport C. With A, B, C drawn out of a hat. So we could see a ping-pong champion vs. a wrestler in a diving event. Etc. This would be so cool!
Yeah, yeah, I know, it’ll never happen. A few years ago in a conversation with a contact who’s involved with international soccer, I suggested my improved tie-break idea, which was to get rid of the penalty shootout and instead add a golden-goal overtime period introducing a second ball on the field. With two balls out there, I assume somebody would score pretty quickly. My contact said they’d never go for it because of the possibility of injury if a player is focusing on ball #1 and is then hit in the back of the head by ball #2.
I would say they will never go for your soccer idea not because ou the risk of injuries, but because it sounds ridiculous.
Thanks D for mentioning what I wanted to make clear. I had to read the sentences for a second time to try and see if it was meant sarcastically. I am still not sure.
Anyway, in doing so I noticed the words “With two balls out there, I assume somebody would score pretty quickly” which might indicate that Mr. Gelman focused on “getting a winner quickly”. That’s not the most important thing of overtime/tie-break I would reason, because they could then just as well skip the overtime and go to the penalty shoot-outs right away for instance. I also reason that the idea is not a good one because introducing a 2nd ball would be counter to the way the game is played.
The penalty shoot out thing IS part of the normal way the game is played in the sense that a penalty can be awarded during normal playing time for instance. There was a brief moment in time when a “golden goal” rule was applied in large international football tournaments if I am not mistaken, where the first goal scored during overtime meant the end of the match and further minutes in overtime were not played (contrary to what is now again the case).
Of course what’s most important in this all is that Mr. Gelman gets a yellow card for positing this preposterous idea. Another one means a red card and he’s out of the game of proposing improvements for sports! If Mr. Gelman wants to risk receiving another yellow card, might I suggest it might be better to stick to american sports like american “football” where Mr. Gelman can propose to rename it “handball”.
Anon:
Usually when I write about sports, it’s baseball—or, as you might call it, “American baseball.”
I’m from the Netherlands and I love baseball (and no, I don’t call that “american baseball”). It’s the only sport I played when I was younger. I played from about 7 years old or so until 16 or so. I played several positions but was a pitcher until I quit for the last few years.
I have fond memories of summers where I grabbed a quick meal just before going to practice around 19:00 hours in the evening. I can still sort of imagine the smell of cut grass and such things. The winters sucked because we trained indoors and hit bottle caps with a super small bat and I had to pitch indoors in a way to small space.
Anyway, I love baseball and I love the personal memories that go with it.
Quote from above: “Anyway, I love baseball and I love the personal memories that go with it.”
I did some cleaning a year ago or so and went through some old stuff and found a picture of me around age 9 or so in a baseball team photo. Man, that was weird.
I sort of had a flashback when looking at the picture of me playing in the summer time on the field. I also sort of didn’t recognize myself immediately in a way. I could also remember some names of the kids in the team all of a sudden. And I can sort of remembered the feeling of that time period with those baseball moments.
It was strange, and I can’t name another time and/or case where that has happened. Perhaps it’s a bit like what is said at the end of the movie “Stand By Me”: “I never had any friends later on like the ones I had when I was 12. Jesus, does anyone?”. Only, in this case for me it would be something like: “I never had any memories later on like the ones I had about me playing baseball when I was about 9 years old. Jesus, does anyone?”
Anyway, it is in line with what I expressed above in that I have fond memories of playing baseball for all those years. Maybe when I die it’s one of those memories or pictures or flashbacks or whatever you call it that might be “played” in your head when you drift off (or however that works). Memories are weird. I get the same sort of thing with music, and music from the 80’s especially when the baseball thing took place for me. I listened to some 80’s compilation album music last night, so perhaps that also facilitated this trip down memory lane…
As opposed to Andrew’s non-serious suggestion for improving futbol, I have a serious one.
First, let me address the question of whether it is already perfect. Almost the whole world is crazy for it. I’m just some American who watches a few games every couple of years, how would I know what’s wrong with it or how to fix it? Well, first off, screw you, you hypothetical question, I get to have an opinion and if you don’t like mine why don’t you make one of your own? Second, I know there are many true futbol fans, including some of my friends, who really don’t like it when a game comes down to penalty kicks. If that’s such a great way to decide who wins, why play the game at all, just do best-of-11 penalty kicks or something. (That is not a serious suggestion, but it is a serious rhetorical question).
With that out of the way, my suggestion is: after regular time and extra time, keep playing, but every five minutes each team has to take a player off the field. Eventually there will be enough open space that somebody will win. You could sub somebody in, so there will still be fresh players. As more and more open space is created, it gets easier and easier to score, even if one team (or both) tries to park the bus. A bus composed of only four people is not going to be effective. And it would be real futbol all the way, not penalty kicks (unless one is awarded because of an actual penalty).
It would not surprise me if something like this has already been suggested. Indeed, I’d be surprised if it hasn’t! But maybe only by nobodies like me who have no chance of actually making it happen. Just because it’s not going to happen doesn’t mean it isn’t a good idea.
Phil:
My suggestion is serious! But, yeah, I like your suggestion too. But I think that dropping players one at a time is a bit too cute; I’d just go straight to 5 v 5.
Phil – You are correct. I am a nobody, and I too have suggested it. Great minds etc.
The A/B/C idea is where the most (and most YouTube-ready) injuries would be likely to happen.
Have you seen this Budweiser advert in the UK from 2005?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY8GSe96UEA
Honestly, no one, by which I mean fans of the sport, would ever go for your idea in soccer because we generally like the game the way it is and we’ve seen lots and lots of odd attempts to “improve” the sport. NASL shootouts, countdown clocks, bigger goals, the original golden goal, the silver goal etc. We don’t want it.
Although, the one idea I have heard that is kind if intriguing is to have the penalty shootout immediately after the 90 minutes and then play the 30 minutes of extra time. That way one team already owns the tie breaker and the other knows it has to score.
Nkh:
I’m a fan of the sport and I like the game the way it is too! What I don’t like is the penalty shootouts. That’s not soccer! I think that playing soccer with two balls on the field, or playing 5-on-5 with no goalie, or various other options, are much more “real soccer” than a penalty shootout.
That argument gets made a lot. And I think there are several answers to it. The most facile is that of course the pk shootout is soccer. It’s how the game has been for decades. One could also point out that two balls makes a different, non-soccer, game. 5-v-5 is not soccer either. It would be like settling a rugby 15s match by seeing who would win a rugby 7s match. No goalie is a school yard game. Obviously opinions differ, but for me, a pk is an actual thing that happens in a soccer match, so settling a game with them is about as good as anything else. They used to do replays, which are clearly just not supportable nowadays, or coin flips, which have no basis in the game. From a sort of philiopshical/aesthetic standpoint, draws are a part of the game. But in certain circumstances one team has to advance and there is not enough justification for using past context to break the tie. So, taking an easily compartmentalized piece of the game, something that players would practice regardless, seems reasonable to me.
The part I dislike about the penalty shootout is that it is too sensitive to minor randomness. When a shootout is decided by 1 goal blocked or one goal missed it’s sort of a noisy event. Penalty shootout but win by 3 or 4 would require a side to be somewhat consistently better than the other.
So that’s my minor tweak suggestion. Otherwise I agree with you.
I should know better than to respond to an early comment without first reading the whole thread. You can see what I wrote, upthread, but the upshot is: I think at some point, after regular time and extra time, each team should have to start taking a player off the field at some interval (maybe 5 minutes). As a nicety, perhaps players with yellow cards could be removed first.
Nkh, you say “5 on 5 is not soccer,” but why not? There has been a World Cup game that ended 9-on-9 due to red cards. Is 9 on 9 still soccer? 11-on-10 is common of course, and 10-on-10 and 12-on-10 are not incredibly rare: in spite of the fact that I don’t watch the game much, even I have seen such games. Is 10-on-10 still soccer?
Matches in serious leagues have ended with fewer than that, sometimes quite asymmetrically (like 9 on 6 or something); you could look it up.
I don’t think most games would come anywhere near 5-on-5, unless both teams decide to just wait.
Phil, 12 on anything? How do players get added? I’m not aware of any rule that would allow 12 players on a field. Of course, if you mean some pick-up soccer at the local park… sure.
Also, in the US it’s common for kids to play 7-7 and 9-9 on smaller fields at younger ages. It DOES change the game a fair amount. I have un-explored theories about this related to dimensional ratios relating the area of the field, and the area of a circle with radius 1 stride as well as the area of a circle the radius of the typical distance a passed ball travels during the time it takes for a player to take one stride and the distance the ball can typically travel without interception.
Basically, making the field smaller and pulling players off the field changes what kinds of actions are optimal.
Pulling players off the field keeping the field the same size would likely make the optimal strategy to do long passes and get around defense. In the box defense would become much less tenable without the whole team there, so you’d see defense in the box, turnovers, and then big breakaways with massive sprints… it’d be hard if you’re already gassed out. Interesting idea, i’m not sure how well it would work. Would be interesting to trial out in exhibition games.
Ha, I meant 11 on 9. I’ve seen it in high-level play.
Sure, as the number of layers diminishes the strategy will change. But that’s nothing like the change that happens when you put the ball on the penalty spot and make it 1 v 1 from there.
Phil,
There is a maximum number of players who can be sent off before the game is abandoned. 12 players is not allowed in any version of the game I know. And as Daniel points out, 7v7, 5v5 etc are different games from 11v11. It’s no different from different versions of rugby. They are forms of the sport but not the same game.
At base, there are reasons that the game has been as stable as it has and none of these suggestions have been adopted. It’s not a broken game. If you prefer it would be otherwise, that’s fine, but what you want is something fundamentally different. I, for one, find basketball incredibly dull in part because the players now seem too big for the court. I would prefer a similar game on a bigger court. But that isn’t basketball. That’s a different game. I also think basketball is “soft” and don’t understand why there is so little physical contact. But then it would handball. And why don’t major American sport have draws? That would actually be more compelling to me. But it would change the games in ways that are not “better”, just more to my liking. The conclusion is: I guess I just don’t like those sports that much.
nkh, I don’t know any fan of soccer/futbol that thinks it’s a good thing when teams win in penalty kicks. I think everyone agrees it’s a compromise because you have to end the game somehow. My idea of making it win by 3 or 4 or 5 or whatever would be an attempt to at least see a result that isn’t too similar to a coinflip. It’s too easy for someone to just plant their foot a little wrong and miss a penalty, or for one keeper to get lucky diving. Win by 3 is faster than 4 or 5 but it at least would indicate more of a consistent result than win by at least 1.
Cutting players off the field, and/or swapping in bench players, and such all make the game quite different and favor rich teams with a deep bench.
I could see an alternative ending where you pick random spots at the top of the box, and do free kicks from those spots with a timed say 3 minutes of play after the free kick, then repeat (swapping sides). That seems more real to me than the penalty shootout. Or maybe just do corner kicks? Both of those options involve the whole team.
Daniel: A regular game is very likely to end with one team one goal ahead, and there is a lot of randomness in scoring or not scoring in many situations. Surely if a game isn’t decided in 120 minutes there were a lot of situations where random things could have changed the result one way or another (if anything in the world is truly random, that is). At this point asking for a team to win the penalty shootout by 3 or 4 doesn’t make much sense to me.
From a soccer fan since early childhood who has no problem whatsoever with penalty shootouts.
Christian,
Yes but there’s 90 minutes in which these things have some chance to even out and in fact *did* even out (otherwise there’s no penalty shootout). In a penalty shootout everything is over in 5 minutes and the result depends fairly inscrutably on whatever weird stuff happened. it’s little to do with skill difference. Adding a win by 3 rule would add, what? an additional 5 minutes to the whole thing on avg? And give a chance for some consistency to occur which makes people think at least the result was justified by something more satisfying.
I am beginning to like my idea of free kicks + 3 minutes of play from the top of the box though.
> Yes but there’s 90 minutes in which these things have some chance to even out and in fact *did* even out (otherwise there’s no penalty shootout). In a penalty shootout everything is over in 5 minutes and the result depends fairly inscrutably on whatever weird stuff happened. it’s little to do with skill difference.
One may also argue that there is no meaningful skill difference if there’s 90 minutes in which it could have had an impact but didn’t (otherwise there’s no penalty shootout).
Daniel: The fact that it’s a draw after 120 minutes is no evidence whatsoever that random events have “evened out”. There is no “evening out” effect in this except if the ref makes concession decisions, which they really shouldn’t.
Generally, while of course skill is important in soccer, I think its appeal is based to quite some extent on the fact that chances that an underdog will beat the favourite are quite a bit higher in soccer than in many other sports. Furthermore, there are skills involved in penalty shootouts, but they’re not exactly the same skills that are required for most of the other parts of the game. Given all this I wouldn’t support the idea to make the penalty shootout potentially much longer for make it “measure skill” more precisely and have less randomness. Of course there is a strong random factor involved in this currently, but I’m fine with that. And to me their current length is just good as it is. Unless it takes too long to achieve a decision that is – I’m not a fan of 12:11 shootouts, and this will only get (potentially much) worse with your suggestion.
> There is no “evening out” effect in this
Indeed, if the teams score at random the longer they play the more unlike a draw becomes.
When a game goes 0-0 it’s because the two teams are able to counteract each other effectively. It’s certainly not pure random as Carlos points out. But randomness plays into it because if something occurs which they can’t counteract… A player trips, a shot goes wild but is or is not touched by the keeper (so a corner is given or isn’t) a player receives a foot stomping or a yellow card or whatever, then things become imbalanced in a way that can lead to scoring.
When you get to 90 minutes and nothing happened, you must impose some big perturbations and see who responds better. One massive perturbation is to give a series of penalties. But why penalties and not corner kicks or direct free kicks at top of the box? Why not pick random spots and do throw ins? Why not remove the players with yellow cards? There are many possible perturbations. Scoring often comes from place kicks at top of the box. It seems more sporting to repeatedly do this than 1-1 kicker and keeper from the spot.
I think the reason they do penalties is because it’s fast. But what’s really fast is a coin flip. So it’s not all about speed.
Daniel: Randomness can play out in any direction. It may give one team a draw that didn’t deserve it, or it may give one team a win where a draw would’ve been deserved (whatever that means), or it may even out in case of any end result, draw or other. The fact that we have a draw after 120 minutes isn’t informative about the role randomness has played in arriving at this result.
Penalties are relatively fast, but they’re also some kind of soccer, which a coin flip isn’t. Also normally penalties mean that we get some excitement and see a good number of goals in short time where before we may have seen none (although admittedly a goal in a shootout isn’t quite as exciting as it is in regular gameplay). And penalties are fairly simple.
But who knows, maybe the reason why I’m supporting penalty shootouts is just that the last time I played a soccer tournament (at hobby level) the only measurable contribution I made to my team is that I converted my penalty in the shootout for place seven or so.
Your idea about medal winner sport A and medal winner sport B doing sport C can in a way perhaps be found in the decathlon/heptathlon from a certain perspective.
If you view the separate events in the decathlon/heptathlon as sports (which they also are independently of being part of the decathlon/heptathlon), and the top 3 in each event as “medal winners”, and the 10 or 7 events as “events drawn out of a hat” you sort of have your idea.
I would like to propose the Scholar-Athlete Olympiad which would combine Math or Physics Olympiad with the Summer or Winter Sporting Olympiad. The format could involve participants competing in both academic and athletic disciplines, with overall scores combining performance in each. The Scholar-Athlete Olympiad would emphasize the importance of both mental and physical prowess which is relevant in today’s society.
This concept could also encourage a more balanced development of skills among students and athletes, highlighting the value of both intellectual and physical achievements. It would also be a way to challenge stereotypes and promote a holistic approach to education and personal development.
See here:
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_boxing
“Chess boxing” . . . don’t get me started on that stupid idea. The correct sport here is Turing’s round-the-house chess.
Or Skeet Surfing (from the movie Top Secret)
The fundamental problem of soccer is that there are so many acts of brilliant athleticism and skill which have no influence on the result at the end (for all the well-known reasons)
So, my proposal is for a panel of judges marking for style points throughout the game, and in the event of a draw after extra time, the style points are used as the decider
The offsides rule becomes (impossibly?) complex when there are two balls on the pitch.
Personally, I like overtime in the Stanley Cup playoffs — let them play until there is a golden goal.
Actually, us really old timers who played soccer way back when, there was no penalty shootout, and in fact there were no cards. I used to know slightly the player (Russian) who got the first red card in the World Cup in Mexico City – he used to work at soccer camps in California. If my poor memory serves, there was an NCAA Men’s final that didn’t have a penalty shootout but went on for so long they stopped the match and declared both teams as champions.
And I assume you all know Andrew coaches soccer, as I used to.
Incidentally, NCAA soccer has often had different rules from the official Football Board rules.
At some point there was an ad in the UK that played on ‘if Americans ran football’, which included ‘anytime mult-eye ball’!
…found it!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eY8GSe96UEA
Fwiw beat you to it, see comment somewhere above.
Flag on the field for committing a blog-comment-foul by Tim Morris for not checking the limited number of older comments in the thread before posting a link to a youtube video.
The solutions to soccer/football’s problems have already been found. Pick up the ball and run with it!
I guess at that point the offside rule would change instantly and this would probably cause VAR to collapse in a sobbing heap.
Well, it becomes rugby. Just don’t have forward thrown passes.
“Soccer if you can pick up the ball and run with it” is rugby. And rugby’s a lot more boring than soccer, at least as a spectator sport.
I have some Australian friends who would vehemently disagree with that. They are objectively wrong, of course, but just wanted to bring that up.
On behalf of the Canadian readership I can safely say that the Aussies have it right!
You don’t need penalty shootouts and other such contrivances to coax a result out of a rugby game. The oval ball delivers!
“And rugby’s a lot more boring than soccer”
Are you talking about rugby league or rugby union? I’ll admit that a bad league game can be pretty dull to watch. Soccer used to be great – end to end stuff, loads of characters etc. But it has become about possession and teams would rather pass back to the goalie than risk losing the it. Which is just plain dull. Rugby union has become ever more skillful and attacking. It can, however, be a little opaque to the casual observer.
perfect answer – I agree completely. I was enthralled by football as a youngster – played in a thrilling attacking style (not to mention those brutal games on heavy pitches mostly involving Leeds United!). Modern possession-at-all costs strategies can be a real turn-off.
Rugby (Union) is a great watch nowadays IMO. I like that games have a “narrative” (in football goals often appear out of nowhere which I guess can be part of the appeal) and the skill levels in Rugby are now pretty amazing – some of the attacking play aligned with first class skills can be truly beautiful (also MO).
Still – chacun a son gout.
Having gown up on the soccer of the late ’80s and early ’90s, that game was anything but great. Even was off, goalkeepers could handle back passes and rehandle the ball. It was utter misery. The game is far better nowadays. And objectively much much faster. And honestly, not all that many teams play “possession-at-all-costs”, if only because very few teams have the personnel to manage that against anything but the very weakest opposition. Very few teams are Spain 2008-12 or are coached by Pep Guardiola. Percent possession over a season tracks pretty well with roster value. If you’re not watching Man City or Arsenal every week, you’re probably going to be seeing a wide variety of tactics.
nkh, beauty is in the eye of the beholder so these discussions are not really resolvable. I’m going by my own perception of football in the 1970’s mostly and nowadays. Have to take into account the wonder of being a youngster when anything could appear to be awesome (even the Leeds of Billy Bremner and Norman Hunter!) – I have a vivid memory of my first football match (Raith Rovers against someone at Stark’s Park when I was 10 I think).
No question there are some great games now – but there is lots of dross. Teams playing 10 behind the ball to try to negate a superior team’s attacking abilities – yawnworthy. Possession football – likewise. Just my perception. I’ll happily watch a random rugby match but quite often switch off from a football match.
I think both ideas have merit. I mean, who wouldn’t want to see a weightlifter wrestling a marathon runner? (Well, except the marathon runner perhaps.)
One alternative way to improve soccer might be to commence the game with the penalty shootout. This would be much more efficient than the current approach: Rather than having to waste a whole afternoon at a match, supporters could be on their way home within just a few minutes! Think of all the extra odd jobs around the house that soccer fans could get done with the additional time? The players would like it too, as it would mean that, with tighter scheduling of games, they could plausibly get the entire season done within a couple of weeks and then spend the next 11 months concentrating on their hobbies. And, let’s face it, goals are the highlight of soccer (you don’t see too many YouTube videos of “Top 10 Serie A uncontested passes to a teammate in a slightly more defensive position” set to banging music). Collapsing the game to a penalty shootout would just give everyone what they really want.
The hat idea could be applied to athletic competitions. We don’t want a table tennis player boxing a 130kg+ wrestler. Measuring overall speed, jump height, etc., from an Olympic athlete seems interesting.
The football idea is terrible. In a high-stakes match, there is usually immense pressure at the end of regular time. Allowing a few extra minutes helps drain the last efforts of each team and shows who has the endurance. After that, it’s likely that most players will be exhausted and unable to run fast. Shootouts are a great option—no more running, just a test to see who’s got the nerves.
In my opinion, there are too many professional fouls in top-level football. Instead of a penalty shoot-out, the team with the fewest fouls should be declared the winner. It would change the dynamic of the game because the players would realize that a foul might end up costing their team the game. Obviously a rule would be needed to decide the tiny proportion of games in which each side committed the same number of fouls.
In my opinion, there are too many professional fouls in top-level soccer.
Instead of a penalty shoot-out, use a simple foul count – the team with the fewest fouls wins. Obviously, the rule would need to be tweaked to deal with the rare cases where at the end of the match, both teams have the same number of fouls.
This would change the dynamic of the game because players would realize that each foul would make it more likely that their team would lose in the event of the match ending with the score level.
I assume “A”, “B”, and “C” would be chosen “randomly.” Sounds like the International Statisticians’ Olympic Games are on their way.
The ABC idea already exists in a way: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt7054840/
As it happens, the ABC has been implemented for sports also in https://nl.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eeuwige_roem with versions at least in Belgium, Germany and the Nordic countries.
Shows that for any idea for a competition, the probability that there’s no reality tv show in some country goes toward zero as time passes and moreover there almost surely is a porn version.
I want to see an opening ceremony on the LA River that outdoes Paris on the Seine.
Easy. Just re-enact the scenes from Repo Man, but with speedboats.
The LA river in the summer is on average about 3 inches deep in most places, so I feel like the Hollywood industry needs to get involved here. Tiny robot models, lots of close camera shots, some CGI…
Alternatively we could do the right thing, embrace the location, and reenact the ending credits of The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai across the 8th dimension
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8MqJ3iGBdOo
Wherever you go… there you are.
I admit it – I’m not a soccer fan. I thoroughly enjoy watching the highlights, but watching a whole match is excruciating for me – so take that into account with my comment. Can someone address why it wouldn’t be better to just allow ties when the regular match ends up deadlocked? It seems to me that all of the proposed changes involve either different skills or excessive luck to resolve the match. If, after 90 minutes neither team has the lead, it suggests they have tied. And, if it is a final match such as the Olympics, then both teams can get the same medal. If a single winner is required, lots of sports use sudden death playoffs – of varying lengths. Penalty shots are the least interesting way to decide a match, at least for this non-fan. Having a 5 or 10 minute playoff seems “fair” – the real problem is that goals are rare enough that you might have too many playoff periods. That’s a symptom of something wrong with the sport, not the method of deciding the winner of a tied match (as I said, I’m not a big fan).
Andrew,
Was your first idea already proposed by others in the past, or the fact that it is happening between Duplantis and Warholm is a mere coincidence? (Warholm did not win gold, but the idea is the same):
https://olympics.com/en/news/mondo-duplantis-karsten-warholm-race-100m-sprint
I believe this actually goes back to something they joked about a while back. Norway/Sweden rivalry thing, Duplantis is known for being extremely quick (it’s a big part of why he’s so good at the pole vault), I believe Warholm made a quip about how he wouldn’t want to race him, etc. Should be kind of amusing. Hopefully better and better-spirited than the disastrous Michael Johnson/Donovan Bailey clown show.
Very interesting, if true:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Penalty_shoot-out_(association_football)
That is an interesting study (I don’t have the study, but the report is interesting). My first reaction is to think this is noise, not a real effect. However, the dataset is large enough and the differences large enough and a plausible mechanism is suggested – so I’ll reserve an opinion. But I find one strange thing in the supposed mechanism – which is some natural tendency to move to the rights. They claim this is not related to left-handedness or right-handedness, so I’ll accept that for now. They don’t seem to have looked at data regarding which side of the road cars are driven on – I think that might matter. But most importantly, I don’t see why that explanation would apply to goalies but not to the penalty shooters. If, in fact, goalies are exhibiting some natural tendency to dive right, why don’t the shooters also exhibit that tendency? One other feature interests me: since this study was conducted, presumably these results are known. From a game theoretic standpoint, we should model the shooter’s behavior given what is known about goal keeper behavior. And so on. What does the equilibrium look like and has it changed over time?
You can find the study here: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/51725719_The_Right_Side_Under_Time_Pressure_Approach_Motivation_Leads_to_Right-Oriented_Bias. They do address why there might be a difference between the goalkeeper’s behavior and that of the shooter – it is related to the time pressure facing the former rather than the latter. I didn’t find any reference to the handedness of the goalkeeper nor the country they were from. They also did a small experimental study, potentially with the usual issues of excessive noise.
The “imbalance” is only 5 goals. And I doubt if it was a 13/24 or 14/24 imbalance they would have made the same claim. So really only 2-3 goals.
I bet if we look closer there’s a couple goalkeepers that heavily skewed to diving the right (either over the career, or for that shooutout).
Then their team happened (or the other team knew about their bias) to be behind in a world cup shootout.
Heres the study if you want to take a look: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/22006059/
Its about world cup games, from 1982 to 2010, that ended in a penalty shootout. There where 204 shots in 22 matches. The goalkeepers team was behind for 24 of those shots and dived right 17 of those 24 times.
So i guess there are about 10 penalty shots per match and only about one of those is while the goalkeepers team is losing. In those cases there were 5 “extra” dives to the right.
Anyway, shouldn’t this be more a strategic decision made before the game? Like they watch some tapes and the coach says “if in doubt, dive right”?