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How to adjust entry fee ... soccer (football)

Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer
Date: Friday, 31 August 2012, at 8:24 a.m.

In Response To: How to adjust entry fee ... soccer (football) (Daniel Murphy)

>> I was surprised to learn that in international competition, the national association team with the best winning percentage in games decided by shoot-outs is ... Saudi Arabia, 4-0.

Hmm. First of all, I think you're data are incorrect or incomplete*, but that's really besides the point I'd like to make :-)

I wonder WHY you were surprised by this fact?

It must be your mind playing a trick on your understanding of the penalty kick shootout concept, thinking that you would expect the "strong" football nations to be on top of such a list (such as Italy, Spain, Brazil, Argentina, etc.).

However, strong nations play each other in the final stages of the "strong" tournaments, such as the World Cup, thus they will not surprisingly end up close to the 50% mark in the long run... Weaker nations do the same (play weaker nations in weaker tournaments) thus also ending up near the .5 mark in the long run. So it will come down to a lot of other things but the teams absolute playing strength, variance and chance being one of them.

Even in tournaments where weak and strong nations play together, they rarely end up in the final stage matches facing of each other, and even when they do, those matches doesn't end up being draws after a full match and extra time.

By definition, penalty kick shootouts are contest between two teams that are as close to evenly matched as possible, on that given day, since they have drawn their match and drawn extra time.

Furthermore, there are more pressure on the players kicking for the big nations in the big tournaments, than there are on the weaker ones.

----

* Looking at the data, it seems Saudi Arabia are 5-1, where as Angola are 4-0 and Argentina 8-3, to mention a couple of alternatives.

Saudi Arabia has reached penalty kicks in the Asian Cup against teams such as Iran and United Arab Emirates.

Looking at data here:
http://www.penaltyshootouts.co.uk/countries.html
...you'll even see that Saudi Arabia has a individual attempt conversion (score/miss) of 87%, where at least a handful of countries have 100% (among these Congo and Zanzibar)!

:-)

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