If you’ve ever wondered why a penalty has an expected-goals value of 0.78, it’s because on average 78 per cent of penalties are scored.
But in the Premier League this season, the conversion rate is almost 92 per cent — 44 goals from 48 penalties. Earlier this month, Chelsea’s Robert Sanchez saved Bruno Fernandes’ penalty to end a run of 32 successful penalties in a row.
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So what is going on?
Variance is one explanation. Penalties are binary; they are scored or they are not. Premier League penalty conversion rates have been as low as 65.5 per cent in 2001-02 and as high as 83.9 per cent in 2013-14. There are periods when players score or miss more. In fact, three of the last five seasons have seen above-average conversion rates.
That recent spike might owe to a law change ahead of the 2019-20 season, which required goalkeepers to be on the line — preventing them from starting behind it to jump forward — and minimised their movement. It takes skilled goalkeepers 0.6 to 1 second to dive to the corners from the centre of the goal, and penalties can reach the goal as quickly as 0.4 seconds, so being pinned to the line compounds the attacking advantage.
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Additionally, penalty takers may be getting used to long VAR delays, which have been attributed to lower conversion rates (as anxiety goes up). An influx of quality penalty-takers might explain the phenomenon, as would the departure of the league’s best penalty-saving goalkeepers (or the reverse for bad takers/savers), but neither has happened.
Of the seven players to take at least three Premier League penalties last season, four are not currently playing in the division: Ivan Toney (scored six out of seven) is suspended, Harry Kane (five out of six) left for Bayern Munich, while Ruben Neves (three out of three) and Aleksandar Mitrovic (four out of eight, making him statistically the worst taker in the division last year) went to Saudi Arabia.
There is a second standout penalty trend this season: the number of left-footed penalties. Of the 48 penalties in the Premier League this season, 23 have been taken by left-footers — already more than in 26 of 31 previous seasons. Proportionately — because there is not an equal number of penalties taken in each season — 47.9 per cent of this season’s penalties have been taken by left-footers, set to be the highest on record and well above the 19.4 per cent competition average.
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Since 2018-19, the number of left-footed penalties has steadily risen. In three seasons between 2018-19 and 2020-21, there were 30 combined. This season has already eclipsed the left-footed penalty total from 2021-22 (22) and is only two away from last season’s total (25).
This is ultimately down to two correlations: a notably high conversion rate and a disproportionate number of left-footed penalties.
Trying to assess causality is complex, though penalties can be fairly rigorously tested. Football is an open sport with constantly moving parts and 22 players, but penalties are as closed a skill as you will find: the ball and players are always in the same places, the distance is unchanged, the ball is static and the taker has one touch to score.
Since 2019-20 — our reference point because of law changes — left-footers have scored 84.7 per cent of Premier League penalties, over five per cent higher than right-footers (79.4 per cent). The left-footers could just be better penalty-takers, regardless of footedness, but this seems unlikely as they and right-footers miss at almost identical rates: 6.1 per cent for right-footers; 6.5 per cent for left-footers. The difference is in save rates: goalkeepers save 14.4 per cent of right-footed penalties but only 8.7 per cent of left-footed ones.
The infrequency of left-footers explains their advantage; academics call it a ‘negative frequency-dependent hypothesis’. Simply, fewer left-footers means goalkeepers learn mostly against right-footers, which completely flips the angles and trajectories for penalties and diving, and in time-pressured situations — such as penalties — they will fall back on learned behaviours, which are more often against right-footers.
Just shy of one-fifth of Premier League penalties have been left-footed since 2019-20, almost identical to the rate across the history of the competition.
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A 1996 study of English Football League players found that “anticipation to right-footed (penalty) kicks was significantly better than that to left-footed kicks,” and it was further ratified by interviews with the goalkeepers, who noted “difficulty perceiving the cues from the left-footed kickers”.
That study could be reasonably critiqued for its age, as it is not contemporary research, but those difficulties are repeated by Matt Pyzdrowski, The Athletic’s goalkeeping expert: “I don’t know what it is, the left-footed players that I played against and played with — and I think you see it at the top levels too — they’re always really tricky. It’s probably a way they control the ball, the way they disguise their shots is a little bit different than right-footed shooters.”
1) Obafemi Martins scoring a PL pen right footed vs Reading in 2006
2) Obafemi Martins scoring a PL pen left footed vs Birmingham in 2007is this good? Yes it is.https://t.co/5w5UiWPqQs pic.twitter.com/kh6O56ywJa
— Duncan Alexander (@oilysailor) November 21, 2020
In an era of unprecedentedly extensive opposition analysis — typically manifesting in water bottles detailing the locations of penalties by opposition takers — difficulties in predicting left-footers should be minimal, and relatively equal to right-footers.
But since the start of 2021-22, Premier League goalkeepers have dived the right way 41 per cent of the time against right-footed penalties — regardless of the shot outcome — compared to 30 per cent against left-footers. That sample feels big enough: inclusive of penalties under the new penalty laws but also excluding behind-closed-doors games during the pandemic, given the psychological nature of penalties.
Left-footers, like left-handers, are a minority in football but are often overrepresented compared to the general population. Football pitches are symmetrical, and the Eurocentric modern positional styles require left-footers, Pyzdrowski explains. “Especially in today’s game, the desire for most teams to want to play out of the back, you see more left-footed players,” he says. “You don’t just see them on the wings, guys in the middle, left-footed centre-backs — a hot commodity. I think that applies to penalties too.”
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Critically, this trend is not the result of a few quality left-footed penalty-takers (or bad right-footers) skewing overall trends. Chelsea’s Cole Palmer (four out of four penalties scored this season), Brentford’s Bryan Mbeumo (three out of three) and Liverpool’s Mohamed Salah (three out of four) are left-footed right-wingers; Alexis Mac Allister (right-footed) who joined Liverpool in the summer, scored six of seven penalty attempts last season for Brighton & Hove Albion but is behind Salah in the pecking order.
Arsenal’s Bukayo Saka is their primary taker and another left-footed right-winger — in fact, all six of Arsenal’s Premier League penalties this season have been scored by left-footers: Saka, Fabio Vieira, Martin Odegaard and Kai Havertz. Manchester City used to have Riyad Mahrez on penalties, another left-footed right-winger, though he only scored 13 out of 21 penalties for City. He has been replaced by Erling Haaland (three out of four this season), a left-footed No 9.
Shot placement also throws up some differences. A trademark of Palmer and Haaland this season has been to aggressively run up as if they are going to strike hard across the goalkeeper. Instead, they roll it into the bottom-left corner.
Since 2021-22, just over one-third of left-footed penalties have been into the bottom-left corner, over double the proportion across the goalkeeper (bottom-right corner).
Each penalty and penalty-taker is different, but greater consistency from left-footers should make them, theoretically, easier to defend against. Comparatively, right-footers show a greater spread, targeting either bottom corner at almost identical rates, and yet goalkeepers still find left-footers harder to predict.
The overrepresentation of left-sided athletes is not new in invasion sports. Similar overrepresentation and anticipatory difficulties have been found in handball penalties, while Nathan Leamon and Ben Jones’ book, Hitting Against the Spin: How Cricket Really Works, explains that left-handedness has risen in top-order test innings because of its advantages of bowling to (primarily spin) and batting against right-handers (spin and seam). Southpaw boxers, who lead with the right foot/hand, hitting harder with their left, won more often at the London 2012 Olympic games.
The likelihood is that the overall penalty conversion rate will drop this season, but given that many teams possess a high-quality left-footed penalty-taker, 2023-24 should still easily see a record amount of left-footed penalties.
Most importantly, it dispels a long-held myth that left-footers are worse penalty-takers. If anything, they are better, but, in a self-destructive paradox, if everyone started using a left-footed penalty taker they would lose their current advantage. Football, eh?
(Top photo: Chris Lee/Chelsea FC via Getty Images)