As I mentioned last weekend, I bought a bundle of books last Saturday, and this week I have been getting stuck into them (opportunities for reading increase in weeks when air travel is involved).
The first book I read was 'Think Like a Freak' and the second one that I am enjoying at the moment is 'The Art of Thinking Clearly'. Entertainingly they both discuss penalty shoot outs, a subject which could have proved particularly topical for us given that the World Cup is on at the moment, but which admittedly now seems slightly less relevant now that England can book their homeward flights straight after the end of the group stage is complete. (Looking for the slimmest of silver linings, I suppose we are at least spared the pain and heartache of going out on penalties this time around. Mind you, who would have thought that with two of the three pairs of group games completed it would be Costa Rica who were sure of their place in the next round with two wins out of two already. Probably more unlikely even than England losing two out of two and being eliminated.)
The two books look at penalty-taking, but from a different perspective - one from the penalty-taker's point of view, and the other from the goalkeeper's, but they both discuss the merits or otherwise of putting the shot straight down the middle.
In 'Think Like a Freak', Levitt and Dubner consider the shooter's dilemma - where to aim the shot. The research shows that the keeper will dive to either the left or the right 98% of the time, and only stay in the centre of the goal for 2%. The question that the book therefore asks is why do only 17% of penalty kicks get sent down the middle. The answer that the book proposes is that penalty-takers actually prefer the higher risk of missing or having the penalty saved arising from aiming to one corner because they don't necessarily have the best interests of their team at heart. Part of their assessment of the situation is to avoid looking foolish at all costs (and the ultimate point that the book is seeking to make is that thinking like a Freak requires being open to the rise of appearing silly), and they can't bear the idea of kicking the ball straight at the goalkeeper, only for it to turn out to be one of the rare occasions when the keeper doesn't dive, and they end up shooting straight into his arms.
The Art of Thinking Clearly shows us things from the other perspective, and assesses things from a goalkeeper's point of view. The subtitle of this chapter is 'Action bias' and it is making a similar point, that again, the keeper doesn't want to appear foolish, and so in the vast majority of cases (hence the 2% referred to above) will dive one way or another, because he wants to be seen to be trying his very best to save the shot, anticipating where it will go, and flinging himself in that direction. However, actually a good policy might be to stay in the middle of the goal, and to wait and see what the shooter does. Maybe action for its own sake isn't necessarily the best policy.
Obviously I suppose things might get rather a lot more complicated if penalty-takers all read Levitt and Dubner, and goalkeepers all read Rolf Dobelli's book. In the short term, we might see a lot more penalties being hit straight down the middle, but then saved by stationary goalkeepers!