Portugal’s Diogo Costa saves a penalty kick missed by Slovenia’s Josip Ilicic during the round of 16 of the 2024 European Championship at the Frankfurt Arena on July 1.
13:52 JST, July 25, 2024
DUSSELDORF (Reuters) – After Benjamin Verbic missed Slovenia’s third consecutive penalty in the Euro 2024 penalty shootout against Portugal on July 1, he described the ultimate test in football as a lottery.
All three penalties were taken in the same manner and produced three almost identical saves from Portuguese goalkeeper Diogo Costa, who each time made a diving save just before the ball was touched.
Swiss-based neuroscientist Jean-Pierre Bresciani believes that penalty kicks are not just a game of chance, but something that can be improved through training. Think, for example, of the ability to react more quickly to a penalty if the goalkeeper moves first.
His research team at the University of Fribourg has designed a simple and portable training device that, based on their tests, they claim can improve players’ sensory motor skills by 28% and increase conversion rates by more than a third.
The team had professional players take penalty kicks on a regular field, against a holographic goalkeeper whose appearance and movements resembled those of top goalkeepers.
Connected to augmented reality glasses, the software randomly assigns the penalty taker a target location. Just before the ball is struck, the hologram keeper initiates a dive, requiring the penalty taker to follow the prescribed path or quickly correct the course and send the ball the other way.
The system was tested on 13 youth players aged 16 to 18 from the clubs FC Basel and FC Luzern, including eight Swiss junior internationals. They performed 10 sessions of 20 penalty kicks using the simulator.
All players were able to significantly reduce their reaction time, or sensory-motor threshold. The average decrease went from 429 milliseconds to 309 milliseconds. According to researchers, this deficit could increase the chance of conversion by 35% if maintained through training.
“I know it works because we measured it, it can be a very useful tool,” Bresciani told Reuters, adding that an earlier lab-based study by the research team involving about 100 players showed the same trend.
“They had consistently better responses,” he said. “We improved the sensory motor threshold. What we improved is the brain’s ability to use visual information about the goalie to direct the kick more quickly and efficiently.”
According to Bresciani, the tool cannot replicate fatigue or the psychological pressure of a shootout situation, but it can improve players’ level of preparation. The concept could also be applied to other areas of the pitch, where faster reactions can change the game.
The software’s algorithms respond optimally to each player’s progress or fatigue by adjusting the timing of the goalkeeper’s movements to maintain the same level of difficulty.
Bresciani said the advantages are precision and compactness, very little equipment is needed, while the holographic goalkeeper’s dives can be programmed down to the millisecond, which a real “training goalkeeper” cannot imitate.
Intel Dependent
Goalkeepers moving before they touch the ball is not new. However, their decisions are increasingly based on data analysis. Companies are providing teams with statistical insights into the techniques and preferences of penalty takers.
The German team could count on the support of software company SAP to closely monitor the opponents at the 2024 European Championship. Analysts sent coaches and players via apps with messages directly to tablets and smartphones to discuss the findings.
According to SAP, the team will have access to data up to kick-off, based on the opponent’s lineups, including annotated video visualizations and key player analysis.
Importantly, the software provides specific data for penalty shootout scenarios, providing information on the behavioural patterns of penalty takers and goalkeepers, including whether some players’ preferences for penalties might change under pressure.
SAP told Reuters it could not provide data or details on how the software was deployed tactically by the German team during the tournament.
The German federation is looking forward to introducing artificial intelligence into prototypes. The federation hopes to scout by collecting data from an average of 1,500 matches per season. The federation also hopes to facilitate the compilation of analyses for the national teams in preparation for matches.
“This would minimize the manual tasks our match analysts have to complete and reduce the time it takes to get answers to a range of important questions we have when preparing for matches,” Martin Vogelbein of the federation’s Scouting, Match Analysis and Diagnostics team said in a statement.
