06 July 2026
Penalty takers should focus on aiming high and wide for the best chance of success from 12 yards, according to a study on spot-kicks.
Strikes like Harry Kane’s thunderbolt versus Mexico are more likely to find the back of the net, compared to stuttering, ‘safe’ shots like the one Bruno Guimarães offered in Brazil’s sorry defeat to Norway.
This is according to an award-winning study, published in 2025, that found footballers taking penalty kicks are sometimes sacrificing the best shots to prioritise their credibility.
A team of researchers analysed 536 penalty kicks from the UEFA Champions and Europa Leagues. Their findings revealed that kick takers are choosing to shoot towards areas of the net where the goalkeeper has a greater chance of making a save but the overall kick success rate is lower, instead of aiming for the top corner of the net, which is statistically more likely to result in a goal.
For every 100 penalty kicks, players chose safer shots that put 3 more kicks on target (forcing the goalkeeper to make a save), but this caution costs them 1 goal they would have scored with riskier shots to the corners.
Professor James Reade, co-author of the study from the University of Reading, said: “Harry Kane must have a foot like a traction engine. His fantastic goal against Mexico perfectly demonstrated the risk and reward of hitting the corner of the net hard and fast.
“We’ve seen our captain miss penalties before, but when he steps up you always feel confident he is going to score because he is so good at placing the ball where the keeper can’t reach it. Penalty takers from all teams should be more like Harry Kane and hit the ball high, wide and hard.
"As we've seen often at this World Cup, penalty takers would rather look like they nearly scored than risk looking like they missed completely. For the team, missing the target or having the shot saved amounts to the same thing. But for the player, that difference feels huge. Egos are getting in the way of national success."
The study, co-published with the University of Stirling and Syracuse University in the USA, won the annual research paper competition at March 2025’s MIT Sloan Sports Analytics Conference in Boston, USA. The study drew comparisons to elite basketball players, such as Shaquille O’Neal and Andre Drummond, who have previously stated they won’t attempt underhand free throws despite evidence that they could improve their rates of scoring.
Before the tournament kicked off, Professor James Reade ran 10,000 simulations of the World Cup to predict which nation would come out on top.
The simulation gave Argentina a 24% chance of lifting the trophy, with Spain (13%) and France (12%) close behind. Portugal and England were joint fourth, each with a 9% chance of going all the way, while underachievers Brazil only had a 5% chance of winning.
Notes to editors:
Professor James Reade, sports economist, is available for interview. Contact the University of Reading Press Office on 0118 378 5757 or pressoffice@reading.ac.uk to arrange.
Do Behavioral Considerations Cloud Penalty-Kick Location Optimization in Professional Soccer: Game Theory & Empirical Testing using Polynomial Regression and ML Gradient Boosting.
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