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BGonline.org Forums
Penalty kicks
Posted By: Henrik Bukkjaer In Response To: Penalty kicks (Bob Koca)
Date: Friday, 8 July 2011, at 2:02 p.m.
>> Do some think that it is bad to place the best kicker at position number 5 because then there is a chance he might not get to kick and his skill would be wasted? That would be an example of what I was talking about.
Yes, some do. And sometimes they are correct to do so.
Only a person thinking in an oversimplified mathematical way would believe that the shooting order doesn't affect the result.
Such a person would argue, that you have 5 players who all have 5 different expected equities (eg. they score on 60% 62% 65% 70% and 85% of their kicks), and no matter what order you play them your team would get the same expected score (eg. 3.42 points). And the sequence you obtain these points cannot affect the result. Thus if your .85 kicker is last and he doesn't get to kick, your team would have lost anyway and you didn't waste anything by placing him last.
However, if you acknowledge that a kicker's chance of scoring could be affected by the amount of "pressure" on him, your entire logic falls apart. Because the expected equity of each kicker is then depended upon the sequence in which they kick. There are many parameters affecting this number, and players are affected very different so it's more or less impossible to compute. Especially since you don't know the sequence of your opponents kickers!
Say that a more "nervous" kicker performs worst if he MUST score to keep his side alive, and he performs below par if he's kicking just after a colleague has missed. On the other he may be kicking better if he's following a team mate who has just scored and his team is leading.
Where do you place him? And would it affect the overall result?
So placing your best kicker last, could in some cases put more pressure on your other 4 kickers thus affecting your total score negatively.
I haven't seen that many shootouts nor have I recorded data from them, so the above is just based on speculation and own experience. But I've seen teams sequence like this: good bad good, to try not to get off to a bad start, and to not place a bad kicker in a tough spot at say 4th position. So the weakest player would kick 2nd or 3rd kick.
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Maybe this whole thing is more psychological than it is anything else, by which I mean that the sequence doesn't really matter that much, as long as the 5 players belief that they are shooting at the best sequence (ie. they are as confident as they could be, going into the shootout)!
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