I’ve always thought this would work a large amount of the time- we just saw Croatia do it twice. Ive always been curious about the science/ psychology of the penalty kick and for me the urge for the goalie to dive one side or the other would be too great.
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Its a bit of a mental game and a game of percentages, plus, people don’t always hit where they aim, even pros.
In theory, hitting down the middle is the best, most successful kicks… sorta. Its only that because goalies tend to choose one side or the other on nearly all penalty shots, like almost every one… why? Because most penalties go to one side or the other. That means that ones down the middle, despite being more successful, are less common.
But there’s a major problem: This becomes a circular argument … if more shots were in the middle, goalies would stay in the middle, thus, incentivizing players to instead shoot to the sides. Shooting down the middle is somewhere between bit of a guess and a a trick play
Oddly enough, the best places to shoot for are generally high in the net, however, these are often the hardest shots for a player to make.
Edit: To add on, penalty kicks are scored about 75% of the time (Im using rough math). And goalies have something like a 15%-20% chance to save if they go to one side or the other, and like almost nothing if they stay in the middle, since so few kicks go there. As such, its almost always worth it to just pick a side, even if you’re wrong, and if you’re wrong, you’re just betting on the smaller chance that they miss the goal.
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