Doubling Down: No advantage in taking first penalty on club competitions either

Just a couple of weeks ago I posted the first article on whether taking the first shot during a penalty shootout - actually gives you an advantage.

In the previous post I went through nearly 150 shootouts across different national team competitions to find out if that was the case.

The answer: it's a toss-up. Taking the first shot does not benefit or hurt you in a shootout which goes against what many pundits would have you believe.

For this second post I went through a similar process, only this time I focused on club competitions - who knows maybe there is something inherently different the two that makes a difference, but after weeks of work on the matter the truth remains the same.

The additional data can solidify the previous arguments I made in the previous post and also gives us a few indications on the risk and reward of taking the first penalty.

The numbers below include all shootouts I could find enough information from the past 15 seasons - and the competitions include:

• UEFA Champions League

• UEFA Europa League

• Copa Libertadores

• AFC Champions League

• CAF Champions League

• Concacaf Champions League

• DFB Pokal

• FA Cup

• Carabao Cup

• Copa Del Rey

• Liga MX Playoffs

• MLS Playoffs

CLUB COMPETITIONS		PERCENTAGE
Shoot first and win	143 of 280	51%
Shoot first, score and win	121 of 210	57.6%
Miss first shot and win	24 of 70	34.2%

The only key differences from Club Competitions to National team tournaments is that there seems to be a slightly larger advantage in taking the first penalty as long as you score. That number going from 53% in international competitions to nearly 58% for club games.

But the trend with the much larger sample size is clear. There is no real advantage in simply taking the first shot in a penalty shootout as you can see is essentially a coin flip. Saying the team who shoots first is essentially has an advantage is a ridi

culous as saying that the team that wins the coin flip to determine the shooting order gives that team an advantage.

Here is the full breakdown of the more than 400 penalty shootouts I analyzed:

ALL COMPETITIONS		PERCENTAGE
Shoot first and win	216 of 425	50.8 %
Shoot first, score and win	180 of 321	56.1 %
Miss first PK and win	38 of 104	36.1 %

By looking at this graph - you may argue that the spirit of the comment about shooting first in a shootout is about shooting and scoring the first penalty.

Even if that is the argument, take another look - scoring the first shot only increases your chances to about 56% percent, a decent increase in your favor but far from a 'massive advantage' that some commentators in the sport make it seem there is.

Furthermore, take a look at the third line - while scoring the first penalty gives you a gentle boost in your chances of winning, missing that shot certainly does a lot more harm, essentially dropping your chances of winning to slightly better than one in 3.

CONCLUSION

The reason why your intuition can make you think it is inherently better to shoot first is because that is true for the actual game, but in a shootout is a lot different.

Even if you go down in the penalty shootouts after the first one, you still have a chance to recover - so the supposed pressure you put on your rival after scoring first is not as big as we think it is.

Like I said last time, teams that win the coin flip should instead consider to choose a side of the field where they have more supporters or even shooting second and know what you need.