PIECES OF PAPER IN STUTTGART, MUNICH, BERLIN, AND MOSCOW
The problem for experienced penalty takers and goalkeepers is that over time, they build up track records. People come to spot any habits they might have—always shooting left, or always diving right, for instance. Levitt and his colleagues observed “one goalie in the sample who jumps left on all eight kicks that he faces (only two of eight kicks against him go to the left, suggesting that his proclivity for jumping left is not lost on the kickers).”
There have probably always been people in the game tracking the past behavior of kickers and keepers. Back in the 1970s, a Dutch manager named Jan Reker began to build up an archive of index cards on thousands of players. One thing he noted was where the player hit his penalties. The Dutch keeper Hans van Breukelen would often call Reker before an international match for a briefing.
Nobody paid much attention to this relationship until 1988. That May, Van Breukelen’s PSV reached the European Cup final against Benfica. Before the match in Stuttgart, the keeper phoned Reker. Inevitably, the game went to a penalty shoot-out. At first Reker’s index cards didn’t seem to be helping much—Benfica’s first five penalties all went in—but Van Breukelen saved the sixth kick from Veloso, and PSV was the European champion. A month later, so was Holland. They were leading the USSR 2–0 in the final in Munich when a silly charge by Van Breukelen conceded a penalty. But using Reker’s database, he saved Igor Belanov’s weak kick.
In Berlin in 2006, the World Cup quarter-final of Germany-Argentina also went to penalties. Jens Lehmann, the German keeper, stood in goal with a crib sheet tucked into his sock. On a page of hotel notepaper (“Schlosshotel, Grunewald,” it said), the German keeper’s trainer, Andreas Köpke, had jotted down the proclivities of some potential Argentine penalty takers:
1. Riquelme left
2. Crespo long run-up/right
short run-up/left
3. Heinze left low
4. Ayala 2 [His shirt number, presumably given for fear that Lehmann would not recognize him]
waits long time, long run-up right
5. Messi left
6. Aimar 16, waits long time, left
7. Rodriquez 18, left
[ce dracu' de portar il stie pe Messi in 2006 dar nu il stie pe Ayala??]
Apparently, the Germans had a database of thirteen thousand kicks. The crib sheet might just have tipped the balance. Of the seven Argentines on the list, only Ayala and Rodriquez actually took penalties. However, Ayala stuck exactly to Lehmann’s plan: he took a long run up, the keeper waited a long time, and when Ayala dutifully shot to Lehmann’s right, the keeper saved. Rodriquez also did his best to oblige. He put the ball in Lehmann’s left-hand corner as predicted, but hit it so well that the keeper couldn’t reach.
By the time of Argentina’s fourth penalty, Germany was leading 4–2. If Lehmann could save Esteban Cambiasso’s kick, the Germans would maintain their record of never losing a penalty shoot-out in a World Cup. Lehmann consulted his crib sheet. Sönke Wortmann, the German film director, who was following the German team for a fly-on-the-wall documentary, reports what happened next: “Lehmann could find no indication on his note of how Cambiasso would shoot. And yet the piece of paper did its job, because Lehmann stood looking at it for a long time. Köpke had written it in pencil, the note was crumpled and the writing almost illegible.”
Wortmann says that as Cambiasso prepared to take his kick, he must have been thinking, “What do they know?” The Germans knew nothing. But Cambiasso was psyched out nonetheless. Lehmann saved his shot, and afterward there was a massive brawl on the field.
Both Van Breukelen’s and Lehmann’s stories have been told before. What is not publicly known is that Chelsea received an excellent crib sheet before the Champions League final in Moscow in 2008.
In 1995, the Basque economist Ignacio Palacios-Huerta, who was then a graduate student at the University of Chicago, began recording the way penalties were taken. His paper, “Professionals Play Minimax,” was published in 2003.
One friend of Ignacio who knew about his research was a professor of economics and mathematics at an Israeli university. It so happened that this man was also a friend of Avram Grant. When Grant’s Chelsea reached the final in Moscow in 2008, the professor realized that Ignacio’s research might help Grant. He put the two men in touch. Ignacio then sent Grant a report that made four points about Manchester United and penalties:
1. Van der Sar tended to dive to the kicker’s “natural side” more often than most keepers did. This meant that when facing a rightfooted kicker, Van der Sar would usually dive to his own right, and when facing a left-footed kicker, to his own left. So Chelsea rightfooted penalty takers would have a better chance if they shot to their “unnatural side,” Van der Sar’s left.
2. Huerta emphasized in his report that “the vast majority of the penalties that Van der Sar stops are those kicked to a mid-height (say, between 1 and 1.5 meters), and hence that penalties against him should be kicked just on the ground or high up.”
3. Cristiano Ronaldo was another special case. Ignacio wrote in the report: “Ronaldo often stops in the run-up to the ball. If he stops, he is likely (85%) to kick to the right hand side of the goalkeeper.” Ignacio added that Ronaldo seemed able to change his mind about where to put the ball at the very last instant. That meant it was crucial for the opposing keeper not to move early. When a keeper moved early, Ronaldo always scored.
4. The team that wins the toss before the shoot-out gets to choose whether to go first. But this is a no-brainer: it should always go first. Teams going first win 60 percent of the time, presumably because there is too much pressure on the team going second, which is always having to score to save the game.
Ignacio doesn’t know how his research was used, but watching the shoot-out on TV, he was certain it was. Indeed, once you know the content of Ignacio’s note, it’s fascinating to study the shoot-out on YouTube. The Chelsea players seem to have followed his advice almost to the letter—except for poor Anelka.
United’s captain, Rio Ferdinand, won the toss, and turned to the bench to ask what to do. Terry tried to influence him by offering to go first. Unsurprisingly, Ferdinand ignored him. United went first, meaning that they were now likely to win. Carlos Tevez scored from the first kick.
Michael Ballack hit Chelsea’s first penalty high into the net to Van der Sar’s left. Juliano Belletti scored low to Van der Sar’s left. Ignacio had recommended that Chelsea’s right-footed kickers choose that side. But at this early stage, he still couldn’t be sure that Chelsea was being guided by his report. He told us later, “Interestingly, my wife had been quite skeptical about the whole thing as I was preparing the report for Coach Grant, not even interested in looking at it. But then the game went into extra time, and then into a penalty shoot-out. Well, still skeptical.”
At this point Cristiano Ronaldo stepped up to take his kick for United. Watching on TV, Ignacio told his wife the precise advice he had given Chelsea in his report: Chelsea’s keeper shouldn’t move early, and if Cristiano paused in his run-up, he would most probably hit the ball to the keeper’s right. To Ignacio’s delight, Chelsea’s keeper, Petr Cech, stayed motionless— “not even blinking,” in the Spanish football phrase. Then, exactly as Ignacio had recommended, Cech dived to his right and duly saved Ronaldo’s shot. Ignacio recalled later, “After that, I started to believe that they were following the advice quite closely.” As for his wife, “I think she was a bit shocked.”
What’s astonishing—though it seems to have passed unnoticed at the time—is what happened after that. Chelsea’s next four penalty takers, Frank Lampard, Ashley Cole, John Terry, and Salomon Kalou, all hit the ball to Van der Sar’s left, just as Ballack and Belletti had done. In other words, the first six Chelsea kicks went to the same corner.
Ashley Cole was the only one of the six who partly disregarded Ignacio’s advice. Cole was left-footed, so when he hit the ball to Van der Sar’s left, he was shooting to his own “natural side”—the side that Ignacio had said Van der Sar tended to choose. Indeed, the Dutchman chose correctly on Cole’s kick, and very nearly saved the shot, but it was well struck, low (as Ignacio had recommended), and just wriggled out of the keeper’s grip. But all Chelsea’s right-footed penalty takers had obeyed Ignacio to the letter and kicked the ball to their “unnatural side,” Van der Sar’s left.
So far, Ignacio’s advice had worked very well. Much as the economist had predicted, Van der Sar had dived to his natural side four times out of six. He hadn’t saved a single penalty. Five of Chelsea’s six kicks had gone in, while Terry’s, as the whole world knows, flew out off the post with Van der Sar in the wrong corner. But after six kicks, Van der Sar, or someone else at Manchester United, figured out that Chelsea was pursuing a strategy. Admittedly, the keeper didn’t quite get its strategy right. Wrongly but understandably, he seems to have decided that Chelsea’s strategy was to put all the kicks to his left. After all, that’s where every kick he had faced up to that point had gone.
As Anelka prepared to take Chelsea’s seventh penalty, the gangling keeper, standing on the goal line, extended his arms to either side of him. Then, in what must have been a chilling moment for Anelka, the Dutchman pointed with his left hand to the left corner. “That’s where you’re all putting it, isn’t it?” [FOTO] he seemed to be saying. (This is where books fall short as a medium. We urge you to watch the shoot-out on YouTube.)
Now Anelka had a terrible dilemma. This was game theory in its rawest form. United had come pretty close to divining Chelsea’s strategy: Ignacio had indeed advised right-footed kickers like Anelka to put the ball to Van der Sar’s left side.
So Anelka knew that Van der Sar knew that Anelka knew that Van der Sar tended to dive right against right-footers. What was Anelka to do? He decided to avoid the left corner, where he had presumably planned to put the ball. Instead, he kicked to Van der Sar’s right. That might have been fine, except that he hit the ball at midheight—exactly the level that Ignacio had warned against. Watching the kick on TV, Ignacio was “very upset.” Perhaps Anelka was at sea because Van der Sar had pressured him to change his plans at the last moment. Van der Sar saved the shot. Alex Ferguson said afterward, “That wasn’t an accident, his penalty save. We knew exactly where certain players were putting the ball.” Anelka’s decision to ignore Ignacio’s advice probably cost Chelsea the Champions League.
