Penalties: Part I - The Perfect Penalty
Researchers at Liverpool’s John Moore University claim to have discovered the components that make up the perfect penalty kick. These include: waiting less than 3 seconds to start the run-up which must be between 4-6 steps, during the run-up waiting less than 0.41 milliseconds for the goalkeeper to move and then hitting the ball with a velocity of between 25m/s and 29m/s. The researchers analysed penalty kicks taken by England players in their most crucial matches since 1962. Alan Shearer’s penalty in the second round match with Argentina at France ‘98 was a perfect penalty according to the research. The researchers have sent their findings to Sven Goran Eriksson in the hope that it will help England overcome their penalty blues.
Interesting as the results may be we question the basis of the research. If you want to examine successful penalty taking, why look at England penalties? Most of those have been missed! Instead they should have focused on Germany’s penalty taking efforts.
It would be intersting to see what the researchers made of Artem Milevskiy’s cool “Panenka” effort against Switzerland. Not text book, but much more entertaining, unless your name is Pascal Zuberbuhler!
