Penalty shootouts: Is the team that kicks first the most likely to win?

In a world Cup, some of the most important matches are decided on penalties. When that moment comes, the captains want to win a coin toss to decide the order of kicks. The reason is an old belief: regardless of the skill of the pitcher and goalkeeper, the team that takes the first penalty kick is more likely to win. Most footballers take this for granted, but the reasons behind this apparent advantage remain a subject of scientific debate

While much of the strategic thinking around penalty kicks focuses on the order in which players kick, it is also important to note the psychological pressures as well. During this year World CupTwo of the first four matches in the round of 32 – Paraguay’s win over Germany and Morocco’s defeat over the Netherlands – were decided by very tense penalty shoot-outs.

For many years, the prevailing explanation was psychological. According to this hypothesis, The team that takes the first penalty kick They play with less pressure, while the second team must constantly respond to avoid falling behind on the scoreboard. This emotional burden ultimately affects the players’ performance. A 2010 study published in the American Economic Review became the standard on the subject, reporting that teams that started shootouts won about 60% of the time, compared to 40% for those who took penalties in second place.

However, as databases grew and more researchers began to study this phenomenon, this advantage began to diminish. Most subsequent studies do not dispute that psychological pressure exists on the team that shoots second; What they are wondering is whether that pressure is enough to make a significant difference to the likelihood of winning the shootout.

Studies published in 2012, 2019, 2023, 2024, and 2025 gradually reduced the estimated size of the benefit. the The most comprehensive analysis To date, based on nearly 7,000 shootouts and 74,000 shots, no evidence has been found that the team that takes the first shot wins more often than the team that takes the second. Moreover, the authors concluded that, if any advantage existed, it would be less than 1.8 percentage points—a much smaller difference than the much-discussed 60-40 split.

A new group of researchers believes this question has been incorrectly formulated. A recent study published in Football studies He suggests that rather than asking whether there is an advantage in taking the first penalty kick, we should explain where that advantage might come from when it occurs. Their hypothesis is that pressure remains the deciding factor, but not all high-pressure situations are the same. The key is to distinguish between penalty kicks in which a foul instantly eliminates a team and those in which a goal ensures victory.

The study indicates that the current soccer The rules do not distribute the moments of maximum pressure evenly. The team taking the second penalty kick faces situations where a miss means immediate elimination more frequently, while scoring and winning chances are distributed differently as the penalty shootout progresses.

The researchers found that penalty kicks in which the goal immediately guaranteed victory were successful 89.1% of the time. In contrast, when failure meant immediate elimination, the success rate dropped to 60.4 percent. More importantly, they found that once the elimination and victory penalties were taken into account, whether a team received the first or second penalty no longer explained a significant portion of the observed performance. According to the authors, the first team’s clear advantage does not stem from the arrangement of kicks, but from the type of psychological situations the system creates.

The authors argue that these differences could have strategic implications. If some players handle intense pressure better than others, it may be advisable to save them for high-risk penalty kicks rather than putting them at the start of a shootout.