Eyes trained on the penalty taker, heels planted on the goal line, Brad Friedel prepared himself for one of the most important moments of his career.
He searched for any hint which direction he should dive, any indication which corner of the goal South Korean midfielder Lee Eul-yong might target.
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It was late in the first half of the U.S. men’s national team’s second match at the 2002 World Cup, and referee Urs Meier had just assessed a foul on American defender Jeff Agoos for shoving down a South Korean forward in the box. Now it was up to Friedel to try to stop South Korea’s penalty kick, preserve a one-goal U.S. lead and keep the Americans on pace to finish top-two in their group and advance to the knockout rounds.
Since he didn’t have any history against Lee or any data on which way he typically went from the penalty spot, Friedel had to rely on a combination of observation and instinct. Only after studying the shape of Lee’s run-up and the way he directed his plant foot did Friedel decide to dive to his right milliseconds before the shot was taken.
“He did something in his run-up where his body weight just shifted,” Friedel said in an interview arranged by Freebets.com. “It was at that moment I knew I had him. The only way he was going to score was if he hit it into the upper bin.”
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For decades, penalty shootouts have commonly been described as a “lottery,” as “90% luck,” as the equivalent to determining the outcome of a match by coin flip. In reality, a goalkeeper who has mastered the art of saving a penalty can use a combination of mind games, data analysis, quick reflexes and guile to tip the odds in his team’s favor.
As this summer’s World Cup enters the knockout stages this week, having a goalkeeper with a knack for stopping penalties could be particularly important. There have been 166 knockout round matches since FIFA introduced penalty shootouts before the 1978 World Cup. Thirty-five of those went to penalty shootouts, a rate of more than 21%.
Five previous World Cup champions survived penalties along their path to lifting the trophy. Three won the World Cup final in a penalty shootout. In each case, the penalty saves that paved the way for those title runs were a product of more than just a lucky guess.
“It’s not like you’re going, ‘Eeny, meeny, miny, moe,'” said Todd Hoffard, the goalkeeper coach for Real Salt Lake from 2017-2020 and for the New York Red Bulls from 2011-12. “Are you going to get fooled sometimes? Absolutely, because you’ve got to make that split second decision. But you’re never really just aimlessly guessing. There’s a lot of preparation involved.”
Better than the old way — a coin flip
Believe it or not, knockout matches that ended in a draw once were decided by an even more loathsome method than penalty kicks. If it wasn’t logistically possible to replay the match in its entirety, soccer officials resorted to drawing lots or tossing coins.
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When the 1968 European championship semifinal between Italy and the Soviet Union ended in a scoreless draw, the referee escorted the two captains into a tiny dressing room to determine the winner via coin toss. Nearly 70,000 fans in Napoli‘s Stadio San Paolo didn’t learn which team would advance until Italy’s Giacinto Facchetti ran out of the tunnel celebrating that he had guessed tails correctly.
The final straw came months later when Israel and Bulgaria played to a 1-1 draw in the Olympic quarterfinals in Mexico. The Israeli governing body was outraged after their captain pulled a slip of paper out of a sombrero indicating that their team was out of the tournament and that the Bulgarians would advance.
On July 24, 1969, Israeli soccer official Michael Almog wrote a letter to FIFA describing the practice of deciding a winner by drawing lots as “immoral and even cruel.” Almog proposed a penalty shootout as a potential alternative.
“I’m not suggesting that this system is the best one,” Almog wrote, “but I think it is better.”
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The soccer world agreed. Penalty shootouts soon became the preferred way to break ties in tournament play across the sport.
Since the penalty spot is exactly 12 yards from the goal line, goalkeepers quickly realized they didn’t have time to react to the flight of the ball. Their best option was to commit to a direction to dive at the moment of contact or even milliseconds beforehand.
For years, goalkeepers didn’t have the benefit of large digital databases of penalty tendencies. They instead relied on previous experience facing the penalty taker or real-time body-position cues to figure out what direction a shot might go. Some paid close attention to the angle or speed of a penalty taker’s run-up or the position or direction of his plant foot. Others preferred to focus on the orientation of the penalty taker’s hips because they found that a more accurate tell than eye direction.
“Some guys gave it away with a little tick, where they peeked, how they approached the ball,” said Mike Lane, a standout goalkeeper at Loyola Marymount before moving on to Leeds United in the early 1980s. “There were all sorts of little things you’d use to try to give you as much of an advantage as you could get, but a lot of times you had those things and you still went the wrong way.”
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By the 1990s, top clubs and national teams increasingly used video footage to scout opposing goalkeepers and penalty takers. They painstakingly searched for any patterns that could provide the slightest advantage should a knockout match come down to penalties.
When former West Ham United and Luton Town netminder Ian Feuer served as the goalkeepers coach for the Los Angeles Galaxy, he made a key discovery ahead of the 2012 MLS Cup Final. Feuer noticed on film that Houston Dynamo goalkeeper Tally Hall habitually dove the same way that he faked he was going to, a stark contrast to other goalies who faked one way and then went the other.
Feuer shared that pregame observation with Landon Donovan, the Galaxy’s primary penalty taker at the time.
“This is kind of a pattern,” Feuer told Donovan, “but, of course, he can switch it up, so it’s not foolproof.”
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In the 65th minute, after a handball in the box by the Dynamo’s Ricardo Clark, Donovan stepped to the penalty spot to try to break a 1-1 tie. Feuer paced nervously on the sideline, thinking to himself, “Now if the keeper switches it up, we’re screwed and I’m going to be out of a job.”
As Donovan started his run-up, Hall juked to his right, then came back to the middle, then pushed off to dive to his right again. Feuer’s advice fresh in his mind, Donovan coolly slotted the ball into the wide-open right half of the net.
“Right after he scores, Landon runs down the sideline and jumps into my arms,” Feuer told Yahoo Sports. “It was a pretty cool moment.”
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Scouting penalty kicks
Scouting has become more sophisticated in recent years thanks to the proliferation of available data and fresh ideas for how to use it.
Datasets track shot placement, giving goalkeepers a clearer picture of which corner an opposing penalty taker targets most often and whether that changes under pressure. Analysts also examine biomechanical data in search of subtle tells and micro-movements that might help a goalkeeper anticipate the shot’s direction. Goalkeepers even use VR headsets to get extra virtual reps against penalty takers and to help them get used to quickly identifying subtle tells.
Teams now have so much data on opposing penalty takers that goalkeepers famously require cheat sheets to keep it all straight. German goalkeeper Jens Lehmann was among the first to use one at a World Cup. He pulled a slip of paper containing handwritten notes out of one of his socks during a 2006 World Cup quarterfinal shootout against Argentina.
Jens Lehmann of Germany had a cheat sheet stuffed in his sock during a penalty shootout against Argentina in the 2006 World Cup.
(Lars Baron via Getty Images)
Cheat sheets have since become more sophisticated. As proof, consider Jordan Pickford‘s water bottle from a 2024 Premier League match between Everton and Manchester City. Next to Erling Haaland‘s name was an image highlighting how he put 55% of his penalties to the goalkeeper’s right. That information proved valuable in the 53rd minute when Pickford dove to his right to thwart Haaland’s effort from the penalty spot.
There is so much data available for goalkeepers now that Feuer worries about information overload. He believes coaches should only present goalkeepers data if it reveals a “solid pattern.”
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“It’s one thing if you have data that somebody goes to their left 80% of the time,” Feuer said. “It’s another thing when it’s like 53% of the time. Like, what good is that?”
Playing headgames
The goalkeepers who thrive in penalty shootouts often do more than merely outprepare their opponents. They also use mind games in between penalties to antagonize and intimidate, to distract and delay.
Argentina’s Emi Martinez is the master of such dark arts, a multilingual trash talker and chest-beating instigator whose psychological warfare has planted seeds of doubt in the minds of some of the best spot-kick takers in the world. He has faced 24 penalties as Argentina’s goalkeeper and conceded only 12 goals, a huge factor in La Albiceleste‘s championships at the Copa América in 2021 and 2024 and the World Cup in 2022.
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When Argentina’s 2021 Copa América semifinal against Colombia went to penalties, Martinez took advantage of the COVID-era empty stadiums to taunt the opposing penalty takers and get into their heads. TV microphones captured Martinez shouting “I know you’re nervous” at one Colombian player and “I’m going to eat you up” at another.
When Manchester United drew a penalty against Aston Villa in a Premier League match a few months later, Martinez went right up to Bruno Fernandes, pointed at Cristiano Ronaldo and reportedly asked why the Portuguese superstar wasn’t the one taking the kick. Fernandes, typically a reliable penalty taker, skied his attempt way over the crossbar.
The most egregious of Martinez’s antics came during the shootout that decided the 2022 World Cup final between Argentina and France. He ratcheted up the pressure on France’s penalty takers with his delay tactics, from talking to the opposing players, to asking the referee to check the placement of the ball, to casually removing the ball from the spot and walking away with it.
Emiliano Martinez of Argentina is prevented by referee Szymon Marciniak from speaking to Randal Kolo Muani of France in the penalty shootout during the 2022 World Cup final.
(Julian Finney via Getty Images)
“He did everything he could to put players off,” French goalkeeper Hugo Lloris told French newspaper L’Équipe. “I can’t win like that, even if I really didn’t want to lose like that.”
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Few goalkeepers are as brash as Martinez, but he is far from the only goalkeeper to resort to psychological tactics. Some dive as hard as they can on the other team’s first attempt during a shootout to send the message that opposing takers will have to find a corner to score. Others try to intimidate opposing penalty takers by staring them down, taunting them or making themselves as big as possible in the net.
When asked if he teaches goalkeepers to use mind games, Hoffard said, “I think that comes down to the individual and the personality.”
“Some goalkeepers have bigger personalities than others,” he continued. “Some are more trash talkers than others. Some just want to keep them to themselves, not even really make eye contact with the other player. I would never ask a goalkeeper to do any antics like that. But then, if they were doing them and they were successful, I wouldn’t ask them to stop either.”
One of the most difficult parts about preparing for penalty kicks is that it’s difficult to recreate the crippling pressure that players endure. Penalty takers who confidently fire shots into the corners of the net during practice seldom are so bold when it actually matters.
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When Feuer coached with the Los Angeles Galaxy, he recalls the team getting lulled into a false sense of security before the 2009 MLS Cup final. A Galaxy team that hardly missed a penalty for two weeks in practice botched three in the decisive shootout, an outcome Feuer says he saw coming.
“You have to try to manufacture big-game pressure,” Feuer remembers telling one of the Galaxy coaches before the match, suggesting having the penalty kick losers run sprints or buy coffees for the winner.
“These players are so competitive. All it takes is a venti latte to raise the stakes.”
For goalkeepers whose teams have advanced to the knockout rounds in this year’s World Cup, the stakes are unimaginably high. A decisive save in a penalty shootout can turn a goalkeeper into a national hero.
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Friedel made dozens of huge saves throughout his decorated career in the Premier League and with the U.S. men’s national team, but his diving save to rob Lee remains one of his signature moments.
Said Friedel, “The 2002 World Cup penalty save, yeah, that comes up often.”
