At least one of the semifinals of Euro 2004 is likely to come down to a gut-wrenching penalty shootout.
Two of this year’s quarterfinals have already gone to penalties when 120 minutes of play proved insufficient to separate England and Portugal and The Netherlands and Sweden.
The two sides who made it through — the Dutch and host nation Portugal — may feel they now know how to win in the battle between goalkeeper and spot kick taker.
A lottery is the term used by most footballers to describe the dreaded shootout, but scientists reckon they can help.
British sports scientists believe goalkeepers can be taught how to save penalties by watching the body language and nervous tics of the kicker.
Penalty takers often unwittingly give away clues to the direction of their kicks, according to research by the University of Greenwich carried out at English club West Ham.
Goalkeepers who learned to interpret the signs stood a nine percent improved chance of predicting which way to dive, the research found.
The researchers measured various angles of a striker’s body as he was about to take a penalty. Variations in the angles of different parts of the body revealed which way the ball would go — right, left or centre.
All the penalties were filmed.
Goalkeepers were shown the results, except that the picture was frozen just as the taker was about to make contact with the ball.
After being told about the clues, the keepers were asked which way they would have dived. Their prediction rate increased by nine percent.
Researchers at John Moores University in football-mad Liverpool believe a penalty-taker’s hips give the best indicator as to where he will place the ball.
In the last moment before the kick, the orientation of his hips will betray the intended direction of the ball, which should give the keeper a vital half-second in which to move to block the shot.
”If the taker’s hips are square-on to the goalkeeper in a right-footed kicker, the penalty goes to the right-hand side of the keeper,” says Mark Williams, a doctor of sports science.
”If his hips are more ‘open’, or angled away from the goalkeeper, the kick tends to go to the left of the keeper.”
In research conducted ahead of Euro 2000, Williams showed goalkeepers life-sized video footage of penalties being taken, filmed from the viewpoint of a keeper standing in the centre of the goal.
The film was stopped four times during the sequence — 120 milliseconds before the kick; 40 milliseconds before; at the point of impact; and 40 milliseconds afterwards — and the goalkeepers were asked at each stage to predict where the ball was being placed.
Perhaps Portugal have the best answer to the shootout; ask the man who knows most about penalties to take them.
Their hero against England was goalkeeper Ricardo who having saved from Darius Vassell then blasted an impeccable kick past David James. – Sapa-AFP