Research carried out in Brazil helps goalkeepers defend penalties

One of the biggest buzzwords in football is that a penalty kick is a lottery. Let no one say that to Uruguayan Richard Fariña. According to the paleontologist, defending charges can be a science.

“It’s about physics, about controlling the body to maintain angular movement. If the batsman is in a certain position, there are movements he won’t be able to do and the goalkeeper needs to know that. These are principles of paleontology,” he says.

He is one of the authors of the study “Reading by the goalkeeper the posture of the penalty taker in men’s football and other factors in defense”, published in November last year by the Revista Brasileira de Ciências do Sport.

He wrote the text alongside Physical Education teacher Manuel Sequeira and statistician Sebastián Vallejo.

One of the applied theories is that of laterality. The idea is that, by the posture of the body, especially the kicker’s torso and foot support, the goalkeeper can know in advance the side of the penalty kick. Paleontology, Fariña’s specialty, studies the living beings that inhabited the Earth in a remote past.

Laterality appears when there is a predominance of one side over the other. When the motor function of the body is dominated by the right or left side. The child, early in life, is considered ambidextrous for using both hands. Over time, one side becomes the dominant one.

“Known in ancient fossils in the past of human evolution, laterality is of general importance in the practice of sports in different forms. (…) Mammals show lateral movement preferences with differential performances that appear early in the life of humans”, says the published research.

The practical study was carried out in Santarém, Pará, with the help of under-20 players from São Francisco Esporte Clube. The goal was divided into 15 regions. The charges were analyzed by programs that dissected, scene by scene, the batsmen’s movements, distance, body expression, time and angle of the kick. The directions of the ball were measured, the moment of the kick and the beginning of the goalkeeper’s movement recorded.

Participants gave their impressions of the experiment. In the last phase, new submissions were made after analyzing the data alongside the goalkeepers.

In the first shooting session, they hit 28% of the sides chosen by the batsmen. After reading the data obtained by the software, the index grew to 63%.

“I study ancient animals that lived in the region [no Uruguai] up to 10,000 years ago. I study their biomechanics a lot. The same biomechanics that are used to assess the behavior of these animals are used in sports”, explains Faríña, who defines himself as “very futbolero”, a very Uruguayan (or Argentinean) expression for claiming to be a football fanatic.

“The fact that the ball is always very free and that the game is collective makes the technique secondary to other factors. In the penalty spot, we can apply biomechanics. If the goalkeeper manages to hold back until the moment the batsman supports the another foot [antes de acertar a bola], the relative position of the body betrays the player’s intention by the inclination of the trunk”, he adds.

In summary, the body position, however much the batter tries to disguise it, indicates which side will hit, however much he tries to hide it.

The scientist recognizes that football is resistant to scientific concepts, but there is a tendency for change. Other studies on the sport have appeared, he assures.

At the same time, the article makes it clear that research is useful to help goalkeepers, but does not affect other factors inherent in the game. The strongest kick, right in the corner or over the top, makes the defense difficult, as it always happened. Likewise, the height and span of the goalkeeper interfere. The taller and more agile, the greater the chance of defense. These are immutable conditions.

“There’s always Messi, there’s always Neymar, there’s always Pelé, people capable of doing things that physics doesn’t explain very well. They dominate technique to the point where they know how to use physics in favor of what they want to do,” he says Flour.

There are also goalkeepers with natural talents to defend penalties, who use the recommendations of the study just because they have the gift to do so, without being aware of it. Players who became famous for being experts in this play. But they are not the majority.

“Science takes its findings to normal people, who can discover new things. The goalkeepers who used our system greatly improved their performance because concepts of posture come from a long time ago. It’s a thing of thousands of years”, defends the Uruguayan paleontologist.