How to Manage Luck

The football is over/paused for a few days, so let's talk about it some more.

In the Quarter-finals of the Euro 2024 Championships, England beat Switzerland in a penalty shootout.?

England scored all 5 of their penalties.

Each player paused after the whistle, took a deep breath and then confidently scored.

• Cole Palmer took the first kick of the shootout. He scored 9 of 9 penalties in the Premier League last season so was as close to a sure start you could get.

• England’s keeper Jordon Pickford saved Switzerland’s first penalty.?

• Jude Bellingham watched the Swiss keeper make the first move and then he rolled to ball into the opposite corner.

• Bukayo Saka (who had missed in England’s losing 2020 Euro Finals shootout) shot beyond the reach of the keeper, hitting side netting.

• Ivan Toney, who has scored 30 of 32 career penalties, didn’t look at the ball at any point. His eyes were on the goal keeper the whole time, so the keeper couldn’t move until late, leaving him lots of room to casually slot the ball outside the keepers reach. ?

• Trent Alexander-Arnold, a dead ball specialist, didn’t pay any attention to the keeper. He smashed the ball into the top left corner, an area that a goalkeeper just can’t get to.?

“Penalties are like the lottery”

A few years ago penalty shootouts were universally considered to be down to pure luck.

“Penalties are like the lottery and you miss them when luck is not on your side.” — Marcelo

“The main factor in a?penalty shootout?is luck again. You need to stay calm and focussed but the biggest thing you need is luck.” — Peter Shilton.

But if it was just pure luck, England had a curse.

England had lost 7 of 9 penalty shootouts in major tournaments prior to Euro 2024. Just under an 80% loss rate!

Can luck be optimised?

There are controllable factors in a penalty shootout and the chances if winning can be significantly increased.?

And given that you’re almost guaranteed to be in a shootout at some point in a knockout competition like the euros, England’s management team focused a lot of effort to change the odds.

People have written entire books on this, so here’s a few things that influenced England’s win:

• Professor Igacia Palacios-Huerta?from the London School of Economics analysed 1,343 penalty kicks from 129 penalty shoot-outs and found that the team that started first won 60.5% of them. England started first.

• 1st and 4th penalties are key, so put your best penalty takers on them - Palmer and Toney.

• When the referee blows his whistle, don’t rush. Footballers who take less than 200 milliseconds to respond?only score around 57% of the time.? Players who take time, score over 80% of the time. The England players took 5.2 seconds from the whistle to taking their shot, Switzerland took just 1.3 seconds.

• If goalkeepers can stall so that penalty takers have wait eight or more seconds, then the players score just 44% of their kicks.? Jordon Pickford made the first Swiss penalty taker, Manuel Akanji, wait for 14 seconds.?

Why is this interesting?

Optimising processes and tactics of tournament football really turned around the fortunes of the England football team under the management of Gareth Southgate.

England won 9 knockout games at major tournaments in 8 years under Southgate, in the prior 50 years they had won just 6!

A key part of improving a process, or system, is realising that there is a need and that it’s possible. Like the perceived wisdom of penalties being completely down to luck, someone had to question it and then exploit the opportunity. When they did it had a dramatic effect.?

“Everything you see around you was made by people who are no smarter than you.?So you can change it.” - Steve Jobs