Research Papers

Uribe, Alivia; Sanders, Shane; Ehrlich, Justin; Reade, James J.; Singleton, Carl

In soccer, penalty kicks (PKs) are taken with fair regularity (~ once in four matches) and often constitute high-leverage, or game-pivotal, events given the sport’s low-scoring nature. In the 2023-24 EPL, PK-conversions represented 7.6%of all goals scored according to tabulations of data from transfermarket.com. Herein, we examine whether professional penalty-takers strictly optimize on expected conversion-rate when choosing shot location, or whether behavioral considerations, such as “looking credible” by not missing the goal space entirely, are also at play. We find significant and substantial evidence that PK takers are sub-optimally sensitive to shot locations that are more likely to miss the goal entirely rather than force the goalkeeper to make a save. We conclude that professional soccer players exhibit the behavioral bias of valuing the optics of a no -converted shot, at the expense of a significantly and substantially lower expected conversion rate.