Planet Money - How to win a penalty shootout (with game theory)

Episode Date: July 3, 2026

Lionel Messi is arguably the greatest soccer scorer of all time. But when it comes to penalty kicks, Messi is merely average. Why? Maybe the answer involves game theory.According to game theory, there’s an optimal strategy for taking penalty kicks. This strategy involves an idea that was once somewhat controversial in economics — that is, until economists started studying soccer players in real life. On today's show, we kick it over to the hosts of the Soccernomics podcast to explain how game theory has changed soccer, and how soccer has changed game theory. Watch the penalty shootout between Manchester United and Chelsea in the Champions League final in 2008. Support:Planet Money+Read: Our book: Planet Money: A Guide to the Economic Forces That Shape Your Life Our weekly longform Planet Money newsletterOur weekly Indicator round-up newsletterFollow: InstagramTikTokYouTubeFacebook This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peaslee with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang. It was fact checked by Sierra Juarez and engineered by Annlie Huang. Alex Goldmark is our executive producer.The Soccernomics episode was originally hosted by Ashish Malhotra, Simon Kuper and Stefan Szymanski and sound designed by Alex Roldan.See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for sponsorship and to manage your podcast sponsorship preferences.NPR Privacy Policy

This is Planet Money from NPR. Last week, one of the best soccer players of all time did something kind of shocking. Leonel Messi missed a penalty kick. The top World Cup score of all time is actually a slightly below average penalty kicker. He's in the running for missing the most penalties of any player in World Cup history. Somehow, Messi is worse at scoring when he's just 12 yards from the goal with no one but the goalie between him and the back of the net. And that might be because there's another skill at play when it comes to penalty kicks.

It's not just about how good you are at kicking the ball. It's about something we hear at Planet Money love. Game theory. Hello and welcome to Planet Money. I'm Jeff Guo. The use of game theory in soccer penalties might be one of the most interesting applications of economic theory, like, ever. Today on the show, we hear from the folks at the Socceronomics podcast, about the art and strategy of the penalty kick.

In a World Cup year where there might be more games going to penalties than ever before, we're going to learn how game theory has changed the sport. Okay, so the whole point of game theory is to come up with and analyze winning strategies. And where it gets fun is that in any game, your opponent, of course, is trying to anticipate your strategy and vice versa. So your strategy depends on what you think they think, think you think they think you think they think they're going to do, right? Like, game theory is probably the best subject to study if you are an overthinker. And nowhere are these mind games

more cinematically laid out than on the soccer field when it's time for a penalty kick. Stefan Schminski is one of the hosts of the podcast Socceromics. He's a retired professor at the University of Michigan and an expert in the economics of sports. And he says if you watch elite penalty kickers, they are not always taking the shots that they are the best at. Everyone who takes a penalty has a good side and a bad side, almost everybody. And you might think that you'd always shoot to your best side. But if you do that, you're predictable. And so what you have to do is sometimes, even though your chances of scoring are lower, you actually want to shoot to your worst side. And what you have to do

is do this in a way that's unpredictable. And that's what's called in game theory a mixed strategy. Now, picking a sequence of random numbers is quite a difficult thing to do, to choose at random, left or right in a sequence, left, right, right, right, left, right, left, so on. That's actually very hard to do. Most people aren't very good at it. And that's what you have to do with penalty taking. Sometimes you have to go one way, sometimes you have to go the other way, but you have to do so in a way that's completely unpredictable. And footballers turn out, professional footballers turn out to be very good at picking those random sequences. Now, in this case, of course, it's not just the penalty kicker who's trying to be unpredictable.

Another host of this economics podcast, Ashish Malhotra, points out that the goalie is also thinking about how to be unpredictable. So it's two simultaneous people sort of thinking about this in this way and also sort of knowing, you know, if I know that he knows, you know, what my tendencies are, then that's going to complicate it further. That's exactly right. What's happening here is that both sides are in a mirror image situation. the penalty takers trying to choose whether to go left or right, and the goalkeeper, if the penalty

is well taken, that doesn't have time to react to the direction, has to choose before the ball is hit which way to dive. And they're then choosing what is their best strategy, dive left or dive right. And they have the same problem because goalkeepers are often better going one way or going the other. And so what it turns out is the goalkeepers are also good at constructing these sequences as well. By the way, in economics, these random mixed strategies, they actually used to be fairly controversial. There were economists who didn't think that people used mixed strategies in real life, partly because most people are just really, really bad at being truly random. People tested this in laboratories with very simple experiments, offering students a few dollars

to try and choose between alternatives, see if they could construct these random sequences of choices, and they couldn't. They weren't very good at it. So people, Because I'd say, oh, this mixed strategy theory is not up to much. And then what happened was a few economists came up, including Ignacio-Clazio-Closius Wurter, who we're going to talk about a lot, actually studied penalty shooting and found out that the choices of penalty takers in practice almost exactly matched the theory. So this was the sort of a breakthrough in game theory to be able to demonstrate that this concept of the mixed strategy, which many academics have been quite skeptical.

about as a practical strategy, it kind of showed that this really did work and that people could do it if it was important enough. And of course, in professional football, penalty taking is pretty important. Now, just as an aside, for those of us who aren't elite soccer players, this research into mixed strategies is still really important. They show up in everyday life. Like, this could help you win your next game of rock paper scissors. You see, according to game theory, the best possible strategy in rock paper scissors is a mixed strategy. You want to be perfectly random, so your opponent can't predict whether you're going to go rock

or paper or scissors. But in real life, people are never perfectly random, right? Say you go rock like three times in a row. There's this big psychological temptation to go scissors or paper next time. And your opponent knows that. This is where the mind games come in. There's actually an entire world of competitive rock-paper scissors players. Back in 2007, they even aired the championships on ESPN.

And the entire basis of this competition is that at the elite level, you're trying to exploit your opponent's tiny little deviations from that perfect random strategy. Now, in professional soccer, once people started to realize that there was this optimal mixed strategy for penalty kicks, you started to see teams collecting data on their opponents to see who was good at being unpredictable and who wasn't. Simon Cooper is another one of the hosts of the Socceronomics podcast.

He's a journalist and a soccer commentator, and he explains how one economist led a kind of data revolution in penalty shootouts. Well, for a long time, almost nobody is tracking how people take penalties. And of course, there isn't much TV footage in the 80s and 90s of many leagues. So it's hard to know, you know, what the guy, what penalties have been. Really, until into the 2000s, almost no teams are using records of how people have taken penalties. But the one guy who has this is an economist, a friend of us, Ignacio Palacio Suerta. And he from the 90s is mapping, he's collecting this database of thousands of penalties.

His wife and his mother are sending him videos of penalties from Spain and elsewhere. And he is creating the best database in the world of how football is taking penalties. And so you've got this weird situation that this guy who's a graduate students at Chicago, he knows more about the habits of penalty takers than any club, even though he doesn't need the knowledge and they desperately do. So when does this come to the fall? 2008 Champions League final, Chelsea, Manchester United. So dramatic.

The Champions League. This tournament features the top club teams in Europe. And ahead of the 2008 championship match, the manager of one of the teams in the final, Chelsea, had heard about Ignacio's database and asked him for his help. So Ignacio ends up writing a penalty report on Manchester United for Chelsea. And then, of course, the game goes to a penalty shootout. I'm in the stands in Moscow. It's about one in the morning when the shootout starts because it has to be prime time in Western Europe.

And what does Ignacio's crib sheet say? It has some amazing advice. So, for example, Ronaldo, the young Christiana Ronaldo, when he pauses in his run-up, The keeper should never move because Ronaldo watches what the keeper does. And when he pauses in his run-up, he usually shoots right. If you watch the penalty, shoot out, knowing Ignacio's advice, it's absolutely thrilling. Cristiano Ronaldo, the world is watching. So Peter Check, the Chelsea goalkeeper follows this advice.

Begg, big step, and he waits and he looks, and Jack stands big. And Check, dives right, stops Ronaldo's penalty. And Check has saved from Ronaldo of all people. Yeah, it seems like the Chelsea goalie is following the economist's advice to a T. But the most important advice that Ignacio has for the team might involve what Chelsea's penalty kickers should do, how they can outsmart the opposing goalkeeper, Manchester United's Edwin Vandesar. And Ignacio says Fondasar, the United Keeper, doesn't really follow a mixed strategy of randomizing. He dives too often to his right.

And so clearly the Chelsea player's got the note. Yeah, there are clips of this all over the internet. we'll link to one of them in our show notes, where you can see player after player shoot to the Manchester United Keepers left. He's taken some pressure penalties before Ancet's and scored, and he drills this one in. Chelsea's second penalty kick also goes in.

And the third. The fourth sneaks in two, just barely. Oh, it got in just, just. Then comes Chelsea's fifth penalty kicker, John Terry. He slips because it's raining. So he misses his goal, and now it is tied for all. This whole time, the teams have been going back and forth, and now they go to a sixth round, and then a seventh.

Manchester United's kicker goes first. He scores. And that's when the Chelsea player, Nicholas Anelka, steps up to the penalty spot, to face off against the Manchester United goalie, Edwin Vandasar. And Anelka has to get this one in. And just when Anelka is about to kick, Fulisar has figured it out. He's worked out they're all kicking.

to his left. And I was in the stadium. Nobody noticed, I think, this gesture in the stadium. It wasn't in newspaper reports afterwards. I didn't see it. Didn't write about it. But watching the penalty shootouts on YouTube, you see very clearly, von de Sars standing on his goal line like this, massive figure. And before Anelka runs up, von Nesar points left to his left. And he's saying to Anelka, I know what you guys are doing. You're all going left. And Anelka probably meant to go left like all the other Chelsea kickers. But now he knows that von Daser knows, that he knows that Von Sara dives off and right. So what does he do? Fondasara said, I think you're going to kick it left. Anelka's probably very shaken. He didn't look happy coming forward, Anelka. And he kicks exactly the

kick, Ignatio said, never take against Fondasara. He said against Fondasar, either go over the ground or high in the top corner, but do not hit it mid-height. So Anilka hits the ball, mid-height to Fondasara's right. And he's not happy now because it's red in Russia. From the Sarce saves it quite easily. The United's night in Europe is Manchester United's night. United win the Champions League. So this brilliant data penalty report for Chelsea ends up backfiring.

Okay, okay. I don't know if backfiring is the right word. Like, yeah, Ignacio's report didn't end up working for Chelsea. But I would say that game theory still prevailed, right? because even though United's keeper was too predictable, in the end, so was Chelsea. They did the most obvious thing. They shot to the keepers left every single time. So Chelsea themselves didn't quite employ that unpredictable mixed strategy.

And that, and maybe the wet field, is what ultimately cost them the victory. After the break, we're going to learn a couple more tips about how game theory has changed the game of soccer. Since 2008, a lot of teams have used Ignacio's data strategy to prepare for penalty shootouts. Ignacio has worked with the English national team, he's worked for Athletic Bill Bow and the Spanish League, and goalies now often even have their crib sheets taped onto their water bottles. And the opposing kickers know that the goalies have these crib sheets taped onto their water bottles. So how do things change now that everyone is trying to play their optimal strategy, which is based on what they think their opponent's optimal strategy is.

There is a bit of a debate going on in the football world about whether really the better approach is the psychological approach or the sort of pure statistical approach. So I think the interesting thing is it. So what Ignatio did is she brought data and quantification to penalty taking. And, you know, that's just about the analysis of numbers. but the world doesn't quite fit perfectly with the theory, in the sense that the theory is based on there are two choices left or right. Well, there aren't really two choices. There's obviously

up top, up, top, left, top, bottom right. And so there's, there are different options. And so I think the issue is, how far does pure number crunching get you? And then how much is additionally, you know, psychology. And then what's interesting about McNap's is he's clearly good at both. He does all the numbers, but then he sort of sits back and says, well, you know, what can we surmise from what we know? He sort of develops a feel for it. So over the past two decades between the research into game theory and the research into soccer psychology, most teams have started to treat penalty kicks in a totally different way. I mean, there are some findings from broader penalty research about things that are good to do.

So, for example, take your time before your shot. take a few seconds. England players, Jamie Carahan, 2006, famous example, would often rush it in shoots, which is a bad way of doing it. And then you want to practice under kind of shootout conditions. So I think they pipe in noise of the crowd, even in training sessions, and you actually recreate the shootout in a training session. You make everybody practice. There's even a strategy for the order in which you want to take your penalty kicks. You should always shoot first, because the team shooting second is often in the psychological position of having to score just to stay in the game. So there's higher stress on the team shooting second, which probably explains why certainly

in the past, in the era before penalty reports, the chances of winning if you shot first was 60%. I have said going first has lost some of its value now that pretty much every top team has penalty reports now. Every top team will go into a game with a report for the shootout. And that makes it a slightly more skill-based and less about psychological pressure, I guess, on the team going second. Yeah, the game is changing. We've even seen studies that say the advantage of going first might not even exist anymore, now that penalty reports have become so common.

It used to be that teams treated penalty kicks as basically a lottery, a game of chance, something you couldn't really prepare for. But nowadays, you see a lot of teams. commissioning these strategy reports. They take time to practice penalty kicking, piping in, you know, that fake crowd noise, so that players can learn how to perform unpredictability under pressure. And we might see the product of all that over the next couple weeks at the World Cup.

32 teams moved on to the knockout rounds, which means there could be more penalty shootouts than ever before. So we'll get to see how this data analysis and psychology works out on the world's biggest stage. Hey, I need your help for an upcoming episode. Are you a beverage goblin? We are looking into the economic forces behind why there are so many new types of drinks and drink flavors, and we want to hear, is this something that's affecting your life? Also, if Planet Money were a flavor, what flavor would we be? I think maybe salty.

Send us your ideas, record a voice memo, email us Planet Money at NPR.org. So we loved seeing all of you Planet Money Plus subscribers at our virtual live event. You had awesome, awesome questions. And we want to do more of these events in person and virtually. So let us know what you're interested in. Email us again at planetmoney at npr.org. This episode of Planet Money was produced by Emma Peasley with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jang, fact checked by Sarah Huades, and engineered by Anli Huang.

Al Skoldmark is our executive producer. The Socceronomics episode was originally hosted by Ashish, Simon, and Stefan and sound designed by Alex Wolvan. They have great episodes about the World Cup, including one on whether soccer managers actually make a difference. Their podcast is based on Simon and Stefan's book, also called Sokernomics. And if you want to learn more about soccer and game theory specifically, Ignacio's Palacio Suerta has also written a book that's called Beautiful Game Theory,

how soccer can help economics. I'm Jeff Guo. This is NPR. Thanks for listening.