For soccer players, the less brain they use, the better for penalty kicks
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Here's a mindblowing video of Ronaldo making a goal in complete darkness after only seeing the first few milliseconds of the ball path: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t03LHpeWnpA&t=330s
I’m a little league coach, currently with 9-10 year olds. Once the kids get comfortable with basic mechanics, the real challenge of the game is not thinking about mechanics, while thinking about the tactical picture.
It’s difficult - in our case right now, working with a talented pitcher who starts to panic and throws wild when she gets rattled in the game (by a walk, hit, etc).
The joyous part as a coach is that with repetition and support, the kids figure it out! That cycle continues.
It was really off-putting how outcome focused some of our other coaches were. I am a player development nerd (Driveline youth certified now - highly recommended - and love their philosophy shaped to rec players) and hated playing teams with coaches that tried to manipulate our player draft process to vacuum up all the better athletes. Those were the teams that would max out their two pitchers' pitch counts every game and cycle all the non-starters on their team through right field.
I moved onto softball coaching at our local middle school and enjoy player development and coaching at that level too. We lost this year to pandemic closures but I am looking forward to going full-on gamified tech next year (Blast sensors, pocket radar, lots of quick fun drills to keep things moving).
This analogy doesn't go particular far, but it works to explain the difference between conscious and subconscious mechanical focus.
Like, do you even know your ATM PIN? Could you think of it consciously without pressing in the air? How about your computer password? Has it become "muscle-memory," learned subconsciously as motions while semantic symbols are discarded?
I realized this after thinking about skills like dribbling in basketball where first you get plain dribbling into your subconscious, then more complex dribbling, then entire moves.
Athletes always talk about when “the game started slowing down” and I always wondered if this was pushing a lot of faculties into their subconscious so they could operate at that speed.
In the nanosecond at which the lights go out, Ronaldo's brain has finished (the equivalent of) considering the concept of "The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog" and engaged the autopilot for reifying that into keystrokes while at the same point the amateur soccer player is still doing (the equivalent of) a hunt-and-peck for the "T" key.
Whilst it's technically a tennis coaching book, the tennis is really just an example to explain bigger things.
Anyway, there's a great story in that book where he says something like "if you want to put someone off their game, compliment them on how strong their backhand [or whatever] is today. From then on they'll think about it before every stroke and destroy their own performance."
https://freakonomics.com/2010/06/14/what-to-do-with-your-pen...
* Rock and scissor are both thrown at 35%, with paper at 29.6%. The article suggests throwing paper to exploit that, but that makes no sense, since you will win 35% lose 35% and draw 29.6%. Rock on the other hand wins at 35%, draw 35% and lose 29.6% https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/the-blame-game/20150...
it's called "panenka" after a player that used to do this in high-stakes games to rub it in. You have to fake your run-up well - otherwise good keepers will notice the difference in run-up and make you look like an idiot [1]
I don't think it's the best chance. Panenkas are about 50-50 and normal penalties are about 70%-30%. And most of that 30% is missing the goal completely. If you go hard either side and don't miss the goal it's almost 100% no matter if the keeper dives the right way.
Then there are strikers like Lewandowski who wait for keeper to decide and go the other way [2]. This is all about developing a subconscious routine and doing it mechanically without thinking. You have no time to consciously process the data and choose the other side.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWBBlpyDfUI [2] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vrXoQKmZui8
This may be different in recreational contexts, as professional keepers dive frighteningly quickly, and are very good at reading the body language of the PK taker.
But there's also the option of taking a normal run-up and blasting it straight down the middle. No keeper is going to be able read that since there's nothing to disguise. And if they dive, it's going too fast for the keeper to recover and save.
The keeper is biased toward action. If they just stand in the center and don't dive they'll be blamed for not even trying. So a hard, fast penalty down the center has pretty good odds of succeeding.
For the uninitiated, a split-step "hop" allows the defender to be uncommitted at the instant of your opponents strike; it provides an equal capacity to move any particular direction, as momentum is removed from the equation.
Smashing a ball into the top corner [without needing to think about it] is also unsaveable and popular with elite penalty takers, but the margin for error in how you actually kick the ball is smaller: a slight miscue and your penalty is off target (or a "nice height" for a keeper that reads where you're shooting).
Most penalties are poorly taken. I hate seeing a keeper dive early to a random side only to be beaten by a weak shot down the middle. I assume that keepers don't have faith in their nerves/reactions and thus have to force their bodies to dive before the shot is taken. Otherwise the best strategy for the keeper is to wait for the shot
> I hate seeing a keeper dive early to a random side only to be beaten by a weak shot down the middle
What people also underestimate is how hard professionals hit the ball, without looking like they are hitting it hard. I had a relatively hard shot, I have injured GKs in pens, I trained with a guy who was once a reserve keeper for a lower division professional side (retired a few years)...I didn't come close to scoring because my shots were nowhere near hard enough. Free kicks are the same, you see the shot in slow-mo, it looks like they are swatting the ball softly...in reality, their technique is so good/efficient that they are crushing it whilst aiming it carefully.
Most professional clubs employ people who just look at penalties. They look at techniques, they look at strategies...saying that the keeper should wait for the ball when it is going 70mph and you have under 100ms to decide is...ludicrous.
> I assume that keepers don't have faith in their nerves/reactions and thus have to force their bodies to dive before the shot is taken.
What they do is: statistical analysis of every penalty taker to see what preference they have (what corner, what they do home/away, what they do when they are facing a goal at a certain end, etc.) and most professional goalkeepers are pretty much experts in watching how players run up to the ball, how the taker's eyes move, how they position their body, how they position their non-striking leg (and strikers counter this: you will notice that most professional takers will look at the ball when they put it down, turn away from the keeper when they walk back, usually keep looking at the ball or directly at the keeper before they start running, and not look away from the ball when running up...there are reasons for this). And clubs will analyse videos of taker tendencies, and keeper tendencies.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27256085
Also fwiw just because > Most professional clubs employ people who just look at penalties. They look at techniques, they look at strategies < doesn't always result in professionals choosing the best technique or strategy. Here's an example:
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/sports/ncaabasketball/und...
You are being distracted from the meat and bones of the argument though - the whole premise that most penalties are poorly taken is blatantly wrong. Most penalties end up in goals - which is how it's intended to be.
These people are obviously the best in the world at what they do, they are picked specifically and paid generously in order to be able to kick a ball into a net. Discussing casually how they could improve without any apparent indepth knowledge is a level of hubris that hackers news is known for breeding.
Then they arguably wouldn't be penalties.
But there's no need to argue with me, I've been watching football for some odd 30 years and playing for a good subset of that. It has never occurred to me that penalties are taken poorly at the pro level - I've seen absolute dross at the amateur level, but I concur that most pro penalty takers are phenomenal, both from a statistical and aesthetical perspective. Not that I think there is that much value in the latter - by design, a penalty kick is the most aesthetically boring of all set pieces. A penalty kick ensues higher emotions due to the odds at play, but from a purely aesthetical point of view, I'd argue that even a corner kick has a much higher potential (a volley, a bicycle kick, a header, a fine-tuned "chess play" that cracks the defense open, etc.)
And a penalty kick doesn't compare to the myriad other open plays in football which have infinitely more aesthetic appeal. A penalty kick is about creating a certain balance of odds, simple as. Every other consideration is secondary.
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/08/sports/ncaabasketball/und...
According to a study of over 100,000 penalties by InStat, about 75% end up in goal [1]
It's easy to argue therefore that they fulfill their objective within the rules of football: to concede significantly positive scoring odds to an opponent who has otherwise been denied the opportunity to do so.
From what perspective are most penalties poorly taken? Classical mechanics, aesthetics...?
[1] https://instatsport.com/football/article/penalty_research
So I'm unhappy with the Aesthetics because keepers know it's largely successful and just guess and jump the gun (or study the stats of the takers and then... just guess) which in turn let's the the takers focus on faking out the keeper with stutter steps and weird run ups. I prefer to see penalties where the kicker focuses on the skill of putting it in a spot nd the keeper responds to that.
They instituted (or started enforcing) the rule that keepers can't jump off the line before the kick is taken. For purely aesthetic reasons, I'd like something similar so they react to the ball instead of guessing
> I prefer to see penalties where the kicker focuses on the skill of putting it in a spot nd the keeper responds to that
It's fine that you prefer this, but this isn't what the penalty rule is about. The rule is balanced so that you create a sufficient advantage for the taker. If you pile requirements on the taker, you probably need to compensate with other advantages (ex: take the penalty from 10m instead of 11m). I can see why this is not something that FIFA would want to touch, ever.
The requirement is actually for the keeper not the tacker. But yes, I know I'm tilting at windmills
However, that is numbers for professional sports. In amateur, the ball will be shot at a somewhat lower velocity, and importantly, amateurs are a lot less likely to actually shoot a well placed penalty. So in lower leagues, it is a more reasonable strategy to try to react to the ball.
If the keeper doesn't move, the ball is comfortably stroked/smashed past him on that side.
Doesn't sound humanly possible to assess the flight of the ball, prepare your footing, and then finally dive up to 3.5 meters to get to the ball.
As has been mentioned there are penalties that are just unsaveable and against an elite penalty taker maybe a goalie is better off just picking a side and taking a chance against them but against the rest of the takers I'd be thinking eliminate the chance they get a freebie by diving too early or just picking a side and force them to score the hardest penalty possible
Perhaps goalies should treat penalties like free kicks i.e. the goalie doesn't stand at the center of the goal and offers a far corner for the kicker to aim at? The goalie knows exactly where the kicker should be placing the ball and if the kicker is perfect accurate it's a goal but if the kicker is off then the goalie should save it?
I like the fact, that penalties on the sides of the goal above a height of about 1,5m are unsaveable (you do not even have to hit the corner), but still world-class players miss, because they get nervous, so they often do not dare to just do that. It should be a game like tic tac toe: Totally solved, the keeper should lose every round, but yet he does not. Makes the game human.
> Players who were successful under pressure showed most of their activity in the motor cortex of the brain. This is the part of the brain active during movement.
> Players who were unsuccessful showed elevated activity in the pre-frontal cortex and left temporal cortex areas of the brain.
If anything, this demonstrates the difference between "computational cognition" vs "embodied cognition", latter being more adaptive in this particular task.
That said, I find the explanation of the researchers dubious; we don't know if doing prefrontal computation is hampering motor performance or it is simply trying to compensate a deficiency in the procedural knowledge of the player. Considering the fact that half of the participants were selected from inexperienced players, and the average participant age was around 22, the latter is the more likely explanation.
Sometimes I like to believe the mastery of consciously shifting attention to some part while not disturbing the other tracks that run subconsciously in your head is one distinguishing feature of the real virtuoso.
I'm not sure this study shows this, though. Lesser activity may be caused by other effects, e.g. because they're better trained, they can set up the motor program (which is often ballistic) in less time. There's also an account where accuracy is linked to larger ensembles of neurons firing simultaneously, so inaccuracy might look the same as prolonged activity.
When I got to the boss I remembered the battle being quite complicated and intense but I couldn't remember where to move, when to jump, or when to attack. But after a few tries as if by magic my fingers took over and executed the sequence of buttons flawlessly. It was amazing because I didn't consciously know what came next but my fingers did. I also felt a sense of euphoria as the memory came back to me; it was a really interesting thing to experience.
It’s especially true when a dance floor is crowded or it’s harder to listen to the music. It’s harder to "cut loose" if one or two restrictions are going on.
For dancing, a couple things helped me out. Repetition and practice. Practicing whole movements together, e.g. footwork with the lead, there is a strong relationship between footwork and your ability to gently exert force and direction. Sure I learned a tuck turn to counts, but I never think about the count of it when leading it, it is engrained into the overall movement I want to execute.
There’s an interesting phenomenon that happens at dance events with a heavy teaching component. The first night of dancing is pretty good and when lessons go underway the level of the room slightly drops because people are trying new things. Incorporating new things would do that and it happens, albeit awkwardly.
There's one rule to score a penalty 100% of times: keep the ball ground level and aim near one of the goal posts base. If the kicker doesn't screw up, then it's a goal, no matter how good and well trained is the keeper: there's just not enough time to go there, that's why the secret is keeping the ball low: you can fight gravity with a strong high or lateral jump, but you can't help gravity by adding more force to the gravity pulling you down. Once this has become automatic, the player only has to keep cold and ignore the keeper, which naturally will do anything to distract him, therefore it's only a matter of making the thing automatic and don't think about it. Mental coaching, which recently has become a thing in football too, can help with this.
example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JNQ6XdrEhqc
edit, better example: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I4EtbA2Nlyw
They found that when evaluating a move, for grandmasters the frontal and parietal cortices had gamma bursts, whereas for amateurs the medial temporal lobe had gamma bursts. This tends to indicate that when grandmasters evaluate a move they are accessing their memory, whereas an amateur evaluating a move is reasoning about it.
I would guess that the same holds true in soccer.
It is actually pretty hard to miss the box on the penalty kick if you are aiming at the box, as opposed to e.g. aiming for the bottom left corner. Then, (given ~equal skill levels) it is pretty much impossible to react to a strong penalty kick and still have time to dive, given the speed and distance - that's why many goalkeepers guess; the stronger the kick, the harder to react. And, as far as I could tell many players have obvious generic "tells" based on how their body, foot etc. align, and especially where they look before and during the run, so that improved guessing. So the best strategy is a strong kick, and deciding the general direction randomly at the last moment. Note how many penalty kicks on the highest levels of play go straight down the middle of the goal, with the goalkeeper diving away from what might seem like an "easy" one to deflect. But if you do something clever and aim, then you are more likely to make the kick weaker, miss, or allow the goalkeeper to guess your plan.
If you 'think' about how you 'walk across the room' - you don't do it naturally.
You don't 'win' during the 'game' - you 'win' during practice, when you are teaching your body all of the skills, and how to score like a walk across the room.
There's nothing you can do at 'game time' but to literally let your subconscious use what it's learned.
Golf is I think the game with the most subtle and minute aspects to that, and you can see the players are so keen on ritual, consistency, routine. 'Everything in it's right place' before the match and you're thinking is calm.
It means your brain is more efficient. More headroom.
I take the story's just an example of what this means in practice.
Too many mind?
Hai, mind the ball, mind the players, watch goalie -- too many mind. NO MIND!
https://wallpapertag.com/wallpaper/middle/1/d/c/783939-the-l...
Shooting penalty kicks falls into the former. Organizing the soccer match into the later :)
Even on the instinctual level, you need consciousness to hone your instincts. For example things like physical therapy or even athletic training are conscious interventions to reshape your instinct. The best penalty kickers in the world likely made a conscious choice at some point to practice these kicks until their good form became habitual.
In that respect, the beauty of the human brain is that it can go from one to the other depending on your habits.
Like walking, talking, riding a bicycle, dancing, BJJ, MMA, witty-banter, or chatting-up one's preferred amorous demographic: conscious thinking is nervous, insecure, self-doubting, clumsy, ungraceful... and just plain bad.
https://smile.amazon.com/Chatter-Voice-Head-Matters-Harness-...