University of Stirling economist Dr Carl Singleton has won a prestigious award in the USA due to his research into the football penalty kick.
Singleton is the co-author of a study which found that footballers are compromising the chance of scoring a goal with the possibility of missing the target completely, so the player can save their face.
This groundbreaking research beat six other finalists to win the yearly competition at the MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, which is a major forum for professionals to discuss research and analytics in terms of global sports.
The research was based on 536 penalty kicks from the UEFA Champions and Europa League. The data showed that those taking a penalty kick are sometimes avoiding the most effective shot placement and instead prioritising their credibility.
For example, given the choice of aiming for the top corner of the net, which is statistically more likely to result in a goal, but at the same time it runs the risk of missing the goal completely, which is exactly what footballers are seemingly wanting to avoid at all costs.
On his research, Singleton talked about his findings saying that “Professional football and soccer players care about missing the goal because it looks like they’ve made a big mistake, by not even testing the goalkeeper. Our findings show that they are not shooting to areas of the goal where they would have a high chance of scoring in.”
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