The Copa América is over: Argentina won the title by winning nothing less than a Brazil, on Brazil and in the mythical Maracana. But the team achieved the pass to play the final, after having eliminated Colombia in a penalty shootout that turned into hero to Emiliano Martínez the Argentine goalkeeper. Martinez achieved tackle three of the five penalties that he was kicked! A day later, there was other definition by penalties. This time it happened in the final itself, and at Wembley – another stadium mythical- Italy beat England. Curiously, once again an archer – the Italian Gianluigi Donnarumma, a true giant (1.96 m tall) – was the ‘figure’ of the match at only 22 years old since they turned him into nothing more than From of the five penalties that kicked him: he stopped two and the rest hit the stick and went out.
Why should he be talking about this in this place? For those who do not follow football very closely, or decidedly they don’t follow it but they ‘turn on’ in a situation like the one experienced on Saturday, July 10 or at the world championships, every time a match ends tied, as have If there is a winner, this instance is reached using two methods: in Europe, as happened last Sunday, an additional 30 minutes are played divided into two halves. If they are still even, a shoot-out of ten penalties (five per team) is kicked alternately. In South America, if the 90-minute game ends tied, there is no extension: the 10 penalties are directly kicked, always alternately.
A pause to make him a question: “If you were the captain of one of the two teams and when the referee tossed the coin you were the one who won it, would you choose to kick first or second?” Before reading on, think about what decision you would make.
As I wrote in this same newspaper four years ago and also in “The Rocket to the Moon” a little more than three years ago, as time goes by, the amount of data collectibles it is getting bigger. The more data, the more chances of finding patterns. In fact, that is what Ignacio Palacios-Huerta has been doing [1], the brilliant Spanish economist and mathematician of Basque origin, who has studied the results like no one else in the world. What I did not know at the time is that Palacios-Huerta was hired by the Dutch Football Federation [2] for the world championship that was played in 2010 in South Africa and for the Chelsea, the english team current European champion, but that happened in 2008.
The interesting thing is that this type of definition began in 1970 and continues to be used until today (2021). In the middle there was a slight difference: when the referee made the draw between the two captains from 1970 to 2003, the team that won the draw was forced to kick first. On the other hand, from 2003 onwards, the player who hit the coin had the option to choose what to do: kick first or kick second.
To be consistent with the nomenclature, let’s call the two teams A and B. Suppose the captain of team A won the toss and decided to kick first. The sequence of penalties then is: ABABABABAB. If after these ten penalties the teams do not break the tie, then a series of two penalties are made (one per team), but the order remains: first A kicks and then B kicks. In his 2010 article, Palacios-Huerta, after studying the sample that he had at his disposal at that time, warned that in more than 100 definitions of this type, the team that kicks first has a chance of winning. [3] from 60-40. Namely, there is no doubt that whoever wins the draw has to choose to start the series! But what Palacios-Huerta also warned is that the system as it is used It is unfair. It is assumed that the chances that a team that tied with another will ‘break the equality’ with greater probability if they win a coin toss does not appear to be reasonable. Therefore, his proposal was that the order to follow out: ABBA ABBA AB. That is, if one thinks that whoever kicks second (let’s say it’s team B), the best what can happen is that match what A did then there is an advantage psychological which obviously has a strong impact on the outcome of a match, especially in tournaments of these characteristics.
To be more precise, the team that kicks first starts with a 60.2% chance of winning, but if they score the first penalty then their chances increase to 67.3%. On the other hand, if it errs, it decreases to 33.3%.
Doing it with the method he proposes, there is still a slight injustice Why? It is that another of the conclusions that appear in the article is that in penalties that serve To define (the last for example), team A has a conversion percentage of 92% while the penalty that serves to avoid defeat … has a conversion rate that is close to 62% !!! That is, team A kicks the fifth penalty of his series before than Team B. If you are interested in the subject, there is a proposal made by two scientists Steven Brams professor at NYU (New York University) and Mehmet S Ismail, born in Turkey and now working in England. They wrote an article [4] that the take one more turn of the screw to ‘avoid’ even ‘that particular injustice’
All of this seems like a ‘theoretical game’ that seems to end here. However, Palacios-Huerta contacted the people of the IFAB (International Football Association Board) that is, the FIFA department that is dedicated to studying and modifying the rules of the game with the idea of improve it. Interestingly, such an institution conservative, decided to put into practice – as a test – the method they call ABBA (like the Swedish music group). They started in competitions for young people U-17 and U-19 (under 17 and 19 years old respectively) who have been practicing it since 2017. The English Football Federation followed suit in a couple of minor professional categories (The Community Shield) but since 2018 in the EFL Cup (English Football League) and finally (at least as far as I am informed), the Dutch took the lead and the Federation of the Netherlands defines its competences with the ABBA method since the 2018 season -2019.
While it will not yet apply to the Qatar world championships next year, it is clear that something It is happening, and although in the game in which Argentina beat Colombia, the one that started kicking was Colombia, no one said that if you put your hand in a jar containing 60 white and 40 black balls and without looking you extract one, insurance it’s going to be white, but it’s also clear to me that if you could choose the color, you’d prefer white to black. Or am I wrong?
[1] Ignacio Palacios-Huerta is currently Professor of Economics and Strategy in the Department of Management en la LSE (London School of Economics and Political Science) en Inglaterra.
[2] https://lsedesignunit.com/News/Latest-news-from-LSE/2018/07-July-2018/from-galileo-to-penalty-shootouts/index.html
[3] https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.100.5.2548
[4] https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2887175
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