LONDON: Penalty takers hoping to
snatch World Cup glory from their opponents in the final few shots of a match
should ignore the goalkeeper and focus on where they want to kick the ball, a
British researcher has revealed.
Highlighting a new scientific study
on how anxiety affects players in penalty shootouts, Greg Wood, a psychologist
from Britain's Exeter University, said players under pressure needed to work to
stay calm and not be distracted by the goalkeeper.
"We are naturally
pre-conditioned to focus on things in our environment that we find threatening,
and in a penalty competition the only thing that threatens the success of the
kick is the goalkeeper, so we tend to focus on him and monitor his movements,"
he told a briefing in London.
"But instead, we should just look to
where we're going to hit the ball... (and) ignore the goalkeeper," he said.
Wood studied university-level soccer players who were fitted with
eye-tracking technology and then subjected to various situations that would make
them more or less anxious while they were trying to score penalties. His study,
to be published in the Journal of Sports Sciences, found that the more anxious
the players were, the more they focused on the main threat — the
goalkeeper — and the more likely they were to shoot the ball at or near
him — making it easier for him to save the shot.
Goalkeepers,
for their part, tended to focus on the ball or on the lower limbs of the kicker,
not at the face or eyes, so there is little potential risk in a shooter focusing
on his aim.
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