I've heard a couple of times now of advice being given to goalkeepers about the philosphy of goalkeepers being taught to just blatently without any clue prior to a penalty being taken to dive left or right and dive in a forward angled motion.

This kind of irks me because I am noticing we are now seeing that it is accepted for keepers to dive completely in the wrong direction of the ball being kicked which makes them look rather stupid and clueless.

I would like to know why keepers are being taught this practice.

From a mathematical point of view there are 3 options for a penalty taker. Left, Right and straight down the middle. Which means that if you divide the goals into 3 sections they represent a 33.3% chance a diving keeper will get it right and 66.6% he will choose wrongly. In my mind 33.3% is not good odds.

That is left = 33.3% of the option. Right = 33.3% of the option and striking down the middle being the other 33.3%.

Why on earth would a keeper be taught that 33.3% is good odds that he will stop the ball?

Now i've never been a keeper but a striker all my career and one thing that separated good keepers from bad was a good keeper could ascertain the direction of the ball once it left the boot very quickly and throw his body in that direction which increased his chances mathematically from 33.3% to upwards of 66.6% - 100% chance of stopping the ball.

Anyone care to enlighten me why keepers are taught to accept 33.3% odds is acceptable nowdays...

The gamble is that even if the shooter spots your jump it's hard to adjust to the other direction so could improve the chances of a missed shot or simply diving the right way. The reasoning is that many players have the ability to place and power the ball so well that if you wait to determine the direction of the shot by the time you dive you will not be able to stop most penalties anyway, unless they are poorly taken, in which case you would have saved it anyway jumping early.

Obviously the better the taker, the harder it is for this strategy to work. Ronaldo for example has the ability to adjust either way very very late and to do it almost without exception whenever the keeper jumps early.

Simon Kuper and Stefan Scyzmanski did a study on keepers responding to penalties.

Apparently right footers are naturally inclined to be more successful and choose the option shooting to their left side side of the goal and the keeper's right. Left footers it is the reverse.

It can depend on a keeper being given information about a player's preferences.

I wasn't aware of such a trend to just choose a save before the penalty being taken.





Edited by Decentric: 17/3/2012 12:31:20 PM

look at the angle of the run of pk taker will assist you in your gamble, a right footed player with a fairly straight run will hit it to the gk right. a wide angle run with a right foot will most times put it to his left unless the taker hits the ball on the outside and curls it to the right, conclusion its harder to save a wide angle run pk.
Also get keepers to look at the eyes of the player when placin the ball, try saving a pen when the takers wear sun glasses and see how many arent saved.