Penalty kicks are pressure-filled moments for most soccer players, and one mathematician from Wilfrid Laurier University has devised a new system to eliminate advantages during the match’s deciding moment.
Laurier mathematics professor Marc Kilgour has co-authored a proposal for fairer penalty kicks after his studies showed the team that wins the coin toss and kicks first is given a sizable advantage.
“The single most important thing for winning a shootout is winning the coin toss,” said Kilgour.
Kilgour found the team that kicks first has a 22 per cent greater probability of winning the shootout.
“Being behind is a real challenge to people,” he said.
To make the match less miss-matched, Kilgour is suggesting a new approach that would eliminate any advantages.
“If you're going to kick first, you must kick five goals, but if you're going to kick second, you only need to kick four,” he said.
If both teams reach five and four goals respectively in the same round, the game moves into a round-by-round sudden death where the winner is the first team to score in a round when the other team does not.
“Our idea was to do something so that when you won the coin toss, you might prefer to kick second rather than kicking first,” Kilgour said.
Kilgour said while it's only a proposal for now, it could shift the power imbalance on the pitch.
While the idea may seem to complicate a long-standing tie-breaking ritual, some soccer fans said it makes sense to remove the pressure off the players.
“Knowing you only have to make four instead of five, it seems a little bit easier,” said Paul Burns, executive director at Waterloo United.
He said it comes down to the mental aspect of the game and having to dig your cleats in.
“If someone makes it, then there's a little more pressure on you to make yours if you know what I mean,” Burns said.
Burns noted that when his team is involved in a shootout, he prefers his players kick first.
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