The World Cup football match between Australia and Peru was played in Doha in June of this year. Australian coach, Graham Arnold, realised that the game, already in extra time and with little possibility of a goal, could be headed for a penalty kick shootout (shootout). Accordingly, he sent substitute goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne onto the field just before the end of extra time, believing that Redmayne possessed the skills to win the shootout. Arnold’s belief was justified. Australia won the shootout when Redmayne saved the kick from Peru’s Alex Valera.

Fox Sports described the save on their website as follows:

‘Australian goalkeeper Andrew Redmayne says it was “kill or be killed” after video emerged of him tossing away a bottle of his Peruvian opposite number during the penalty shootout win that sent the Socceroos to the World Cup.

‘The 33-year-old Redmayne became an Internet sensation after dancing his way along the goal line as Peru’s players prepared to take their penalty kicks in an attempt to put them off.

‘He was lauded as a national hero in Australia with his save of Alex Valera’s spot-kick that gave the Socceroos a 5-4 win on penalties on Tuesday in Doha and a place at a fifth straight World Cup.’

This was not the first time a substitute goalkeeper had faced a shootout.

Sportskeeda’s early reference to the shootout states:

‘The penalty kick was invented in the year 1890 by an Irish footballer by the name of William McGann. McGann was a goalkeeper himself, who played for Milford FC in the very first season of the Irish league.’

Football is a team sport that generates billions of dollars in revenue from events including the World Cup. In some countries, it is a matter of national pride, elevated to a religion, whose players are treated as demi-gods. Fernando Torres, the Spanish player who achieved great success while playing for Liverpool said:

Football is a team sport and not an individual sport. We win as a team, and every individual is better if we are part of the team.

It is therefore remarkable that one of the richest of international sports embraces a grossly unfair play to decide the result of a game where both teams have delivered mediocre performances, resulting in a draw. And then looking to their goalkeepers and five best shooters, to salvage their performances; and sometimes, national pride.

In the above-mentioned game, Australia and Peru put in mediocre performances and wasted goal-scoring opportunities, resulting in a goalless draw and the shootout. A shootout requires a goalkeeper to salvage a game within a matter of seconds, which his (all-male) team failed to win, as a team, with varying strategies, in the luxury of 90 minutes (plus extra time as appropriate). This article explains why right-thinking football fans would, if they had thought about it, find it grossly unfair for goalkeepers to shoulder the crushing burden of salvaging mediocre team performances, and possibly, national pride.

First, during the shootout, all eyes are usually fixed on the goalkeeper more than the shooter, (whose back is generally to the camera). When the goalkeeper misses the shot that loses the game, it is the goalkeeper’s face that is embedded in the fans’ memories; it is the goalkeeper that bears the shame of being unlucky in the game of chance he was forced to play; it is the goalkeeper’s family that will be remembered as having lost the game; it is the goalkeeper’s children that will suffer the taunts at school.

Secondly, a sporting spirit or sportsmanship, is the glue that binds every player into an indivisible team, inspiring each player on to greater success. It is best exhibited when a team is not on top or, in the case in question, held to a draw. When the team fails to win the game, its sporting spirit splinters and its collective gaze turns to the goalkeeper to salvage the team’s reputation and possibly, a nation’s pride. Granted, goalkeepers (and shooters), spend hours studying each other’s strategies in the hope of improving the odds, but, like it or not, the shootout is simply an endgame of chance. While the shooter can lodge the ball at any point between the sticks, the goalkeeper is expected to, intuitively, know where that point is, when the ball is kicked. The word is clairvoyance! (See Allen St John’s comments below on this point.)

Thirdly, consider this scenario: a top-class team puts in a mediocre performance and is held to a draw by a lesser-skilled team; however, the latter punts the former from the tournament in the endgame of chance. But the lesser-skilled team loses in the next round. If the game had been decided according to the solution described below, instead of a shootout, the top-class team may have got their act together and won the game. The real losers of the shootout are the fans.

Finally, because the shootout is an endgame of chance – of luck trumping skill – various strategies have been used by goalkeepers and shooters to improve the odds. Strategies such as shooters feigning the actual kick have been banned; and goalkeepers, formerly required to move only after the ball had been kicked, are now permitted movement. Professors Greg Wood and Mark R Wilson (Manchester Metropolitan University and Exeter University respectively), in their study Quiet-eye training for soccer penalty kicks, (Researchgate 2011), revealed the effects of goalkeeper movement on the shooter:

In a further study, Wood and Wilson (2010b) manipulated the saliency of the goalkeeper by asking him to attempt to distract the penalty taker (by waving his arms) under counterbalanced conditions of threat. Results suggested that participants were more distracted by a moving goalkeeper than a stationary one and struggled to disengage gaze from a moving goalkeeper under situations of high threat. Significantly more penalties were saved when the goalkeeper was distracting, and shots were also hit closer to the goalkeeper on these trials.

Juxtaposed with such distracting movement by goalkeepers are two factors that tilt the odds towards the shooters: the first factor is described in The Physics and Mind Games of a World Cup Penalty Kick, (6 June 2018, Popular Mechanics), where Allen St John notes:

Penalty kicks are taken from a distance of 12 yards away from the goal. The strongest shooters can kick at speeds of up to 80 mph. This means that the ball reaches the goal line in 500 milliseconds. A goalkeeper takes 600 milliseconds to move from the center of the 24-foot-wide goal to one of the posts. In short, a well-struck shot is all but guaranteed to be a goal. A study of 138 penalty shots in World Cup Finals games between 1982 and 1994 suggests that even world-class goalies aren’t able to buck these odds. They guessed the direction of the kick only 41 percent of the time – slightly worse than random chance. And they stopped only 14.5 percent of the shots.

The second factor is that a skilled shooter facing a goalkeeper prancing along the goal line, should be able, in a split second, to direct the ball towards the goal post furthest from the prancing goalkeeper, leaving the latter chasing a burger.

St John’s calculations refer to a ball being kicked into the front bottom corner of the goal, showing that it is impossible for the goalkeeper to reach the ball and prevent a goal. And, if the ball were kicked instead, to a top corner of the goal, the greater would be the impossibility of the goalkeeper reaching it. While every shootout does not involve the ball being kicked as calculated, the calculations demonstrate the odds against the goalkeeper. Odds of this nature have no place in a team sport.

The argument for retaining the shootout because it is a tradition, is to be considered in light of other traditions that have been discarded because they could not be considered the fabric of a modern society: driving under the influence; smoking in public places; and prohibitions on women working, owning property and accessing loans.

The solution of reducing players as a mechanism for deciding the winner, has been considered before but rejected, for reasons unknown to the writer. Because the shootout treats goalkeepers, literally, as scapegoats for their teams’ mediocre performances, FIFA must amend its rules to require teams in drawn matches, to play extra time with progressive reductions in players as described below. The rule will require that the first team to score a goal in extra time with reduced players, is the winner. Because the aim is to have a goal scored, it follows that the lynchpin of defence, the goalkeeper, must be replaced by the substitute goalkeeper. Aside from the substitute goalkeeper, each team would have seven other players, (regardless of their playing positions), making a total of eight players per team. The teams would play for 30 minutes, 15 minutes at each end. The team to score a goal after the start of the 30-minute period, would win the game. If this is considered sudden death, so be it, The intent of the game is to produce a winner on goals. Consequently, the team that scores the first goal in the extra time, is the winner.

If a goal has not been scored in the first 30-minute period, a second 30-minute period is to be played, with each side fielding four players plus the substitute goalkeeper, making a total of five players per team. Again, the team to score a goal after the start of the 30-minute period, would win the game. If after the second 30-minute period there is still no goal, then, the teams play for another 30-minute period with four players per team but without goalkeepers. As with the earlier periods, the team to score a goal after the start of the 30-minute period, would win the game. Any of the players could act as the de facto goalkeeper but, not being goalkeepers per se, they cannot handle the ball. It would be difficult to think that this third 30-minute period would not produce a goal and a winner.

A few points of clarification: first, the normal rules would apply; second, the teams could comprise any player, including substitutes; third, an injured player cannot be substituted – tough; and finally, although the entire playing periods could total about 3 hours (90 minutes plus 2×30 minutes and the third for say, 29 minutes, being the minute in which a goal is scored), it should not be a deterrent to the solution, because footballers’ physical attributes far exceed those of tennis players, where matches have exceeded 3 hours. The final of the Australian Open played on January 30, 2022, between Rafael Nadal and Daniil Medvedev, lasted about 3½ hours. Yet, this match was overshadowed by 5-hour, 6-hour and 7-hour matches played by various players in the past.

The World Cup, (and for that matter, any football game), is not about an endgame of chance. It is about teams battling it out; the two best teams making it to the Cup final, with the best of the best earning the right to hold the Cup aloft. Currently, when a team wins the Cup final in a shootout, FIFA is tacitly admitting that the World Cup could be an endgame of chance in which the winner may not be the better of the two teams. If the fans of a team were asked why they attended or watched their team play, they would say that it was to see them win. They would not tell you that they wanted their team to be held to a draw for the thrill of the penalty shootout – and Lady Luck.