Anticipation of Penalty Kick to a Goal Keeper

Exploring the merits of perceptual anticipation in the soccer penalty kick.

This study investigated whether soccer penalty-takers can exploit predictive information from the goalkeeper's actions. Eight low- and seven high-skilled participants kicked balls in a penalty task with the goalkeeper's action displayed on a large screen. The goalkeeper initiated his dive either before, at or after the ball was struck. The percentage of balls shot to the empty half of the goal ...

A field simulation study of the effectiveness of penalty kick strategies in soccer: late alterations of kick direction increase errors and reduce accuracy.

This field experiment investigated the relative merits of approaching the penalty kick with either a keeper-independent or keeper-dependent strategy. In the keeper-independent strategy, the shooter selects a target location in advance and disregards the goalkeeper's actions during the run-up. In the keeper-dependent strategy, the shooter makes a decision resting on the anticipation of the goalk...

Improvement of Soccer Penalty Kick Precision through Mental Training

Imperceptibly off-center goalkeepers influence penalty-kick direction in soccer.

Intentional action: from anticipation to goal-directed behavior.

Converging evidence indicates that several cognitive capabilities across the individual and social domains, including action planning and execution, understanding others’ intentions, cooperation and imitation are essentially goal-directed. For example, goal representations have a crucial role in the planning and control of action, and action understanding and imitation are performed at the goal...