Are England Now the BEST Penalty Takers? World Leading Penalty Expert Explains | Geir Jordet (E419)

0:03Who do you believe is the best penalty taker in the world? Harry Kane. It looks pretty clear from the off that you knew it was going to be retaken.

0:14Jake Humphrey: Yeah, so when I watched the clips I saw that he likes to move early pretty much. And in the end obviously it worked out nicely for me. Geir Jordet, the world's leading expert of penalties. England has gone from being definitely worst in the world at penalties to definitely best in the world at penalties. When the foot hits the ball, I lose interest. Everything that we think we believe about penalties, we believe wrongly.

0:43Well, Gia, welcome to High Performance. Thank you. So for over 20 years, you've studied what many people believe is the most pressurized moment in professional sport, which is the penalty kick. If people are interested after this conversation, they can even find your incredible book, Pressure, which I know has been read in the corridors of power by pretty much every football association around the world. But for the first time ever, and I don't think you've ever done this on a show before, we are going to study some of the biggest penalty moments in the history of football. We're going to take a look at the people who do it best, both the goalkeepers and the players.

1:17And we're also going to ask how taking penalty kicks translates to our own lives. And it's the perfect time to have this conversation with the World Cup happening all around us. Are you kind of excited we're reaching the stage in the tournament where you get to study penalties and see what people have thought about for this tournament? Of course. I mean, this is a big highlight for me. I sometimes look at myself as a seasonal worker. So every time there's a big tournament, I'm called upon. I get to provide my views on things. And of course, I'm so interested in this. So this is going to be really good.

1:47You said something before we started recording, which I think was fascinating. You said the actual penalty kick itself is the least interesting part of a penalty shootout. But that's the only part that we analyze and we look at. Why do you believe that? Yeah, well, first of all, just to extend that a little bit. Sometimes it is like this, that when, for me personally, when the foot hits the ball, I lose interest. Everything that's important has already happened. So it's no longer interesting what's happening with the ball and so forth. Now, I'm exaggerating a little bit because it's obviously a part of it, and I think we're going to get into some of the details of that as well.

2:25But it's about the game before that. It's about how you prep individually, collectively. It's about the confrontation with the opponent, the interaction with the opponent. It's the big psychological, social game that leads up to that kick. I mean, that's where the real fascinating stuff hides. I mean, make no mistake, this is complex. It's one simple kick, but everything going into it is so complex. Who do you believe is the best penalty taker in the world? Harry Kane. Why? Well, good stats. Let's start there. So he scores in the high 80s in terms of his goal percentage, and the average is just below 80.

3:11So he's 10 % more or less above the average. He has delivered penalties at the highest level in the Premier League in Bundesliga for now more than a decade. And the process fascinates me with Harry Kane. So he has a very set pre-shot routine. The way he sets up a penalty has been now almost identical for 15 years. He stands in the same way. He looks in the same way. He breathes in the same way. He starts with the same foot. It's like the same rhythm. Everything is the same. When you go into the depth of that, you will find nuances that he will change, but they're nuances. So he has this core setup that is very stable.

4:05And it's stable and robust. And that's what you want from a psychological point of view. And I actually have a personal story with this as well. So I published my book now two years ago in the spring of 24. And I devoted a big chunk of a chapter to Harry Kane. So one thing was the routine that he has, the way he sets up the kicks, but also the technique that he used. because he was the best kind of proponent for what I call, or the field calls, the goalkeeper independent shot. So that's the type of shot where you've decided beforehand where to shoot. So I'm going to go high left. You just put your head on the ball.

4:53You make sure to hit it cleanly and get it to that spot on the left side with as much precision and pace as you can muster. Harry Kane did that for 10 years, and he did it brilliantly. No one had more pace. No one had more precision. Beautiful shots. But then you could see kind of towards the end of this kind of tenure that some goalkeepers were on to him. So I have this section in the book about him. I'm two days away from handing in the very, very final manuscript. Very final manuscript. No return. I'm watching. I'm with friends. at this football bar in Norway, in Oslo, and I'm watching the Champions League game between Bayern Munich and Arsenal.

5:39Penalty kick Bayern Munich. Harry Kane steps up. Okay, I'm like, we're going to see. He's going to show everything that I have in my book, I'm thinking. And then he uses a completely different technique. He scores, and I'm literally on the table jumping, not because he scored. People around me thought it was because of that, but because he used a different technique. What he did now was that he looked at the goalkeeper. So he approached the ball, almost stopped before he got to the ball, looked at the goalkeeper, let the goalkeeper make a move to the side, and then simply rolled it in the other side of the net, which is the goalkeeper-dependent technique.

6:18And this is a huge event for the best penalty taker in the world to do something like this. And then when I tracked him from this, he hadn't completely changed because the next kick, he used the goalkeeper independent approach again, and then came a couple of kicks with a goalkeeper dependent approach. Now, this is his brilliance right now, is that he alternates. You never know. There's no way of knowing, will he pick the goalkeeper independent or the goalkeeper dependent? So he's completely unpredictable, and that just adds another element to his quality.

6:55Jake Humphrey: So which is the most effective way? so for the longest time penalty kick researchers have established that the goalkeeper independent kicks have been somewhat better than the goalkeeper dependent kicks the short answer to your question is that, and this is based on I did a study the past five years in the Premier League so these are not penalty shootouts but penalty kicks, only specialist penalty takers and goalkeeper dependent penalty takers, they score about 7-8 % more than goalkeeper independent kicks. So the short answer is that goalkeeper dependent kicks where you react to the goalkeeper they are more effective when you know your stuff.

7:39But obviously the most effective thing is to have both in your locker. So the goalkeeper has no idea whether they're going to get goalkeeper dependent kicks. And the best penalty takers in the world that's how they now roll. Well let's have a look then at some Harry Kane penalties. Tucks away. That's just sheer power right? Like the goalkeeper goes the right way and can't get there. Yeah, exactly. Because that's what you need. You need proper pace so that if the goalkeeper goes correctly, it's still not. Quite a few of these the goalkeeper knows where he's going to go, it looks. Here's the Arsenal kick.

8:08So that's the first time he used that. And then there's, well, back to goalkeeper Independent kick. Now it's Dependent kick. And he keeps alternating this. And what you can see on this video here now is that every time he uses a goalkeeper Dependent, like here, the goalkeeper ends up going the wrong way. I think actually there's one kick where the goalkeeper is on his way to the wrong way and then he changes his mind because he sees where this is going but then Harry Kane just puts it high and he has no chance of saving it. I'd love people to watch that as well as listen to it as well because it's so swift.

8:48You almost can't see which ones are goalkeeper dependent and goalkeeper independent and that is only hundreds of hours on the training ground, isn't it? It is. You can't change a decade's worth of penalty taking overnight. No, exactly.

9:04Jake Humphrey: So when would you, you know, one of the things that you often hear people when they miss a penalty, they say, I changed my mind just before I was doing it. So if you were Harry Kane there, when would you make up your mind which technique you were going to adopt? I suspect that he decides this way in advance, which technique to use. Then there's execution of the technique. But the actual decision, I suspect, happens a little bit beforehand. But with that said, I mean, Harry Kane and some of these other specialist penalty takers also, they sometimes end up with multiple penalty kicks in the same game.

9:43And Harry Kane and others, they've used different techniques in the same game. So you kind of have to be prepared for whatever. Because if you scored on goalkeeper de Pente's shot in the first half and you get a shot in the second half, what are you now doing? Are you using the same or are you alternating?

9:58Jake Humphrey: So can I ask you then about the Qatar World Cup in 2022 when he did get multiple kicks in the quarterfinal against France against his club mate, Hugo Lloris. Did you notice a difference in the technique he used? I did not. I looked I looked at it 50 times and I couldn't see anything he shot one over the bar and scored one oh yeah I wonder would there have been additional pressure you think that miss from Harry Kane was because he thinks this guy's seen me in training for a decade well I definitely think there was additional pressure and with evidence in hand I mean you have a good case for saying that the pressure got to him as well but that's the question right did he actually feel a different setup.

10:45Right, time to turn our attention to England. We can't have a high-performance podcast episode about penalty shootouts without talking about England. And this is really interesting because you've both been involved and studied deeply what's been going on with England. And I know that for the last few years, Damien, you've been involved in one of the working groups at the FA. I wonder how often penalties were discussed in those meetings that you were in. Not as frequently as you might imagine.

11:10Jake Humphrey: they spoke about pressure moments and they can be in lots of different guises so they've been included in conversations around moments of acute pressure This is interesting because I feel like I should interview the two of you now because you've both been involved in this and I think you can give some real insight into the conversations that you've had behind the scenes at the FA but the study of England from 1996 to 2024 is absolutely fascinating Where should we begin this conversation about England? Well, we should begin it actually six years before what you mentioned, because 1990 was the first big shootout for England in Italy that they lost.

11:53And then they proceeded to lose basically the majority of the penalty shootouts, of course, throughout the 90s and the early 2000s. and in my the beginning of my studies I also I published a research article at one point with a title Why do England fail at penalty shootouts so it's and the reasons I came up with there was just that the experience of pressure for English players and English teams probably due to historical reasons media reasons the deep interest that fans have for the game in this country probably just increased the pressure even higher for English players than for other players and the data that I used for that was I looked at body language and I looked at a couple of things I looked at the extent to which players from England compared to other countries would look away from the goalkeeper and the goal in the seconds leading up to the kick So basically, in the past, because nowadays no one does that anymore, you would put the ball on the penalty mark, you would walk back.

13:07And you could walk back in two ways. You can turn your back to the goalkeeper, or you can face your goalkeeper as you're walking back. And about 60 % of English players would turn their back to the goalkeeper. And the second highest ranked team in turning their back to the goalkeepers were probably about 30%. So English players turned their back to the goalkeepers much more than others. And one more thing, English players were much quicker to react to the referee's whistle than any other player from any other team. Now, these two kind of behaviors combined led me to, again, speculatively, because I don't know, to conclude that English players more than others responded to the pressure by basically trying to escape it, avoid it, not look at the event at hand, get it over with as quickly as possible.

14:03And when we correlated these kind of behaviors to performance, we didn't see any effects on the looking, but we found an effect on the quick reaction. The quickest penalty takers, they would miss more shots significantly so than the players who were a little bit calmer and took a second or two to react.

14:20Jake Humphrey: So is there a rule though about how quick from a referee's whistle you have to take a penalty? Don't think so. No one has really tested that because, I mean, seconds when you're standing there waiting for a penalty kick probably feels like minutes. So to stand and wait for five seconds is very, very long. Now, another way to phrase that question is, is it good to stand and wait for as long as possible? Like is there a limit with respect to your performance? And definitely there is. If you're standing long, you allow also more thinking to get in. And the best example probably is Marcus Rashford in the 21 Euros final.

15:05In my data, he's still the one who has stood the longest in this particular situation. He stood for 12 seconds after therefore he blew his whistle. and he said afterwards that in this period I was probably sinking a little bit too much. I was trying to find a perfect way to make the penalty. And he took also significantly more than what he usually takes and you do want to kind of remain consistent with your kind of regular routine in that situation.

15:37Jake Humphrey: So is there a sweet spot? Probably. and I don't think that it's for everyone also that you need to stand long I mean we spoke about Mbappé who's always quick so for him to stand and wait for 3-4 seconds could be an eternity I mean he should be quick because that's how he operates for most players I will say that you need to just plan this you need to rehearse this you need to find something that's comfortable for you maybe you want to take a breath maybe you want to take two breaths Maybe you want to look at the goalkeeper, look at the ball in a certain way. But what you shouldn't do is look at the referee's whistle as a starting gun, saying that now you have to take the shot.

16:21All the whistle does is it tells you you can now take the shot. Well, make sure that you stay where you are, because in a moment, Gia is going to explain to us just how England have transformed their penalties. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. So this first image is Gareth Southgate addressing his players, standing in a circle. His coaches are there as well. Why is this a significant image regarding England's penalties that you want to show us? So this is from the Euro 2024. And this just shows, it illustrates the comprehensive, defensive, deliberate, regimented approach to everything around the penalty shootout.

17:10Because here we are in the huddle, and it's controlled. We see only 11 players, and we see, what is it, four key staff in addition to Southgate. Now this is very unusual, because for every other team, and also for England, leading up to this particular tournament, the whole staff is there. There's like 10, 15, 20 staff. All the substitutes are there. And to be very frank, it's a big mess. It's very hard to communicate in those situations. So what Southgate has done here is that he has just analyzed how can we communicate most effectively. Now, of course, he has also bled on his journey to that because it did not look like that three years before.

17:58and this is the most effective way to set up this huddle which makes this unique. Because? It's more effective. He can now basically create eye contact with everyone. He can get messages across better. Three years ago, he struggled to get the messages across because it took him five seconds to find the player that he wanted to address. But now he finds that player quickly. There's no extra noise. There's no extra chaos. this is a professional focused working environment and that's what you want. England, and that's the big story here, in my opinion, has gone from being definitely worst in the world at penalties to definitely best in the world at penalties.

18:42And when I say best in the world at penalties, it doesn't mean every penalty is going to go in. It doesn't mean that every shootout is going to be won, but it means that the processes, the structure, the system is unparalleled. No one is close to that. And it seems to me, although I guess we'll get an answer to that this summer, or perhaps, that it's a systemic organization-driven process. It's not just a coach-driven process. Are England statistically the best penalty-taking side in the world now? They've won their last, is it three out of four? Which puts them up there. but now we're dealing with a sample that makes it hard statistically to conclude.

19:25And you talk about England as they, not we, almost forgetting the fact that you've been involved in a lot of these discussions over the last few years. I think it'd be really interesting if you're happy to take us into the emotion that you've seen in those rooms when you've been talking about major tournaments and talking about penalty shootouts, whether you've seen the confidence grow within.

19:47Jake Humphrey: Well, I think Geer's point is really interesting there because I think it is systemic. rather than coach-led. But when I've been in the meeting rooms, what always stands out for me is the humility of the coaches to defer to knowledge and data and people with different experiences. So whether that was Gareth Southgate or Thomas Tuchel more recently, they don't come in with a presupposed answer. They're not saying how many England caps have you won to be able to have an opinion on this. It's the humility and the openness and the curiosity that I think really stands out. And I think when we... So I know that Gere's been cited regularly by the coaches in terms of his research and your work and the impact.

20:32So I think they're confident in the processes

20:36Jake Humphrey: rather than necessarily focused on the outcome. And has Thomas Tuchel said anything in the recent meetings that you've been involved in regarding penalties that make you think we might see something different this time around? No, I think what, in my experience, to what I've seen him do is, and again, I think it speaks to the humility of him that he's come in and not tried to deconstruct the brilliant work that he'd inherited, that culturally and systemically was already in place. I think he brings something very different, but I think he also was built on the foundations. He's not tried to rip it up and start again.

21:09Jake Humphrey: I think that speaks volumes for, again, his curiosity and understanding. Let's have a look at some more photos and clips. So this is a shot of John Stones with a big smile on his face, giving a double high five to Bikai Osaka. So I'll tell you my impression of this, and I'm very curious on your take on it, having definitely been important originating it. So I saw this shootout in the year of 2024, England versus Switzerland. And I see, obviously, I mean, I'm so curious when I see this, what's England's next play in this game. And there definitely was a next play. And you could see it even from the glance at the mid-circle.

21:59So the mid-circle for me is a huge source of information in penalty shootouts. Too bad this is the part of the stadium that TV producers are least interested in. But they should really turn their cameras on it because that's where everything happens. In interviews that I've done with players, they will say that the mid-circle, that's where the anxiety peaks in a penalty shootout. It's not when you walk towards the ball or at the ball, but it's in the mid-circle. When you wait to take your shot, the anxiety is intense. Everyone in the mid-circle now, since probably 20 years back or so, they're standing with their arms interlocked on the mid-circle line.

22:41Now, why do they do that? probably because everyone else does it. It shows they're a team. So there's like this external kind of element to it. But there's no real function behind it. And when I looked at England in this penalty shootout, I saw not throughout the whole shootout, but for big parts of the time, they did not interlock their arms. They were standing next to each other. Now, why would they do that? There could be a functional aspect to that. and one of those aspects could be this body system. And I was amazed to see what I saw. Starting with, as you can see on this image here, when Saka puts his shot away, which is obviously an amazing feat in itself given his miss three years earlier.

23:30So that was huge. And he walks back and he's met by John Stones. Not extraordinary in itself, But then comes the next player. I don't remember who that was now. Was it Cole Palmer? Something like that. And he's met by another one. Is it Declan Rice? I don't remember. And then the third player comes, he scores, and he's met by a third player. Now there's a system. And this is the buddy system. So clearly, again, I'm curious about processes underlying this, but clearly there's a system for we're taking care of in a structured way every single penalty taker in the first five, which means that every single player in the mid-circle has a task.

24:16so they all have a job it's not just I'm here to passively observe and kind of sell a cheer on my teammates but they actually have a job and it kind of increases the probably feeling of contact, connection, belonging it puts them together as a cohesive unit in this event that typically is viewed as only an individual kind of performance sequence So what can you tell us about how this came about?

24:43Jake Humphrey: Yeah, of course Well, again, you're cited in this case, so I'll give you the context. The idea had come about, and none of this is mine or ours, that when we'd been lucky enough to sit down on the podcast, Dan Carter, the New Zealand rugby union great, spoke to us how the buddy system had originated in New Zealand that at any one moment you would always have two members of the squad that understood you at a deeper, more intimate level than other teammates would, and they'd understand how you react under pressure, how you need to be encouraged, how triggers that can get your mind back on the job, that you would have two people that you knew would always have your back, like we saw the guys doing when Mbappe was scoring.

25:25Jake Humphrey: So I spoke to the coaching staff around what he'd said was the significance of that. It gave you a sense of belonging, that connection, but also the idea of psychological safety. And then you'd been involved in some research that I shared with them that said that if you're greeted by somebody and you're made to feel that you still belong, even if you miss your penalty for whatever the result is, the resulting penalty after that is more likely to score. Your odds increase because even at an unconscious level, you realise you haven't been ostracised for failure. So it was a combination of what Dan Carter had said and your research that I threw it into the group and just shared it with them.

26:08Now, I should emphasize that that was where my input ended

26:12Jake Humphrey: and the coaches took it on and decided to run with it. So it was nothing to do with me. It was them being willing to do it. It was just trying to take some ideas and connect it. Brilliant. Really brilliant. It's, to me, one of the big pioneering discoveries in this. So I think it's beautiful. Well done. Well, again, I'd love to claim the credit. You're seeing the modesty from this man here now, aren't you? No, no, but it was your research that spoke about that idea that if somebody misses, they still need to feel that they haven't been ostracised or cast out of the group because of a failure. So it's the guy who comes next that the impact is greatest on.

26:54But you took it to the FA, and as Gia has just said, we're now the world's greatest penalty takers. Well, let's... Thanks, Damien.

27:06Jake Humphrey: I'm not claiming credit, Gia. I'm giving him credit. He's refusing to take the credit. So what we've established really is that no one here wants to take full credit, but you both had in some strange way input into the transformation of England as a penalty-taking nation. But the person that really does deserve the credit is Gareth Southgate. Do either of you think Gareth Southgate gets the credit that he deserves for the transformation that England underwent, both in terms of penalties and in so many other areas in his time as coach? Well, I think so. I feel like the story has been told quite well of him as a very modern leader that addresses, delegates, and organizes systems and structures for not just the football-specific parts of the game or not just the physical parts, but also these more softer, human, social, emotional aspects.

28:11I feel like that story has been told quite well. And I hope that people see it the same way that I see it. Well, let's go to 2022. Why do you believe that that was the greatest final of all time? I mean, the tension and the drama in that game was just amazing. Before we even get to the penalties, 3-3 after extra time. So much excitement towards the end. Two fantastic, formidable opponents. So even, so open. And then it gets down to, before the penalty shootout, There were three penalty kicks in the regular game. France's comeback. Mbappé's just extraordinary performance under pressure before the penalty shootout.

29:08And then you get this spectacular penalty shootout that's pretty much driven by the Argentinian goalkeeper who just sets the premises for everything and just holds that penalty shootout in the palm of his hand, which makes this about so much more than just football or a penalty kick. It's about confrontation, it's about dominance, it's about social performance under pressure, cognitive, emotional performance under pressure. So everything kind of melts down into this spectacle of a wonderful penalty shootout. And we're going to take a look at some of those moments now. And this is still going to be amazing for people that are just listening to this on their podcast play out.

29:50but if they want to of course they can also watch on their podcast player they can watch us on youtube as well because it might give a bit more depth to the conversation um but before we go into some of these clips we've got some photos here of france versus argentina in the 2022 final please talk us through what we're looking at here the score is now uh argentina is up by two so basically mbappé needs to put this penalty home to to keep france in the game um he knows that and the Argentinians know that. So what we're about to see, or actually what we see around this image, is that Emi Martinez is glancing up at the video screen.

30:30I'm speculating a little bit here, of course, because I don't know what he's thinking, but this is what I think he's thinking. He glances up to see if the video screen picks him up. And I think what he sees is that he is not in the image, hence he can now get to work. He can do stuff. And what he does is, in the next shot or so, he actually effectively tries to tackle the ball off the penalty mark, which I think is special for a goalkeeper leading up to a penalty kick. And the reason he does that is that Emi Martinez is a brute. He's manipulative. He uses whatever tricks he can come up with. And of course, the interesting bit with this is how does Mbappé react to that?

31:13Jake Humphrey: Can I just ask, Gordgier, would all this be premeditated, do you think, from Emi Martinez or is it instinctive? I think he will go into these games thinking that if we have penalties, I will do whatever it takes. And then he's an opportunist. He looks for ways that he can do something. So there's also an instinctual part of it. So what we got here? So what Mbappé is doing here now is he's going to pick up the ball and he's going to have a little bit of a laugh and he's going to look at the referee, he's going to look at the goalkeeper. And the point here that I find fascinating with how Mbappé deals with this is that he is pretty flexible and agile in this situation.

31:53It's not a very rigid, locked focus, you know, because most people in this situation will be like, oh, I need to keep 100 % focus. Nothing can kind of penetrate this armor of mine. But he's just loose, flexible, agile, and lets him do it, takes the ball away because he needs the ball, obviously, and then a little smile, and then he's back onto it again. Almost like he's kind of started his process. He's let all the fun and games happen from the goalkeeper. He allows it to some extent. Yeah, okay. And that's the key. And that's important because if he's rigid and has a certain set way of doing things that he can't deviate from and the goalkeeper impacts that, he's psychologically damaging Mbappe at that point.

32:35Exactly. If you let it get to you, your reaction is so rigidly focused, then suddenly you kind of dropped your momentum in this situation.

32:45Jake Humphrey: But I found the interesting bit was the laughter. It reminded us of, we spoke to a tennis player called Johanna Konta who said that in the second half of her career she wrote the word smile on the spine of a tennis racket so that when you had moments where things went wrong or unexpected she had a ready built reminder to laugh, to dampen the cortisol that is spiking at moments of pressure. Yeah. Would you expand on that? So I see different sides of that. You asked me earlier about what do I kind of look for or can I tell if someone is about to score or miss. Now I have to tell you this, that the only thing that sometimes gets me really skeptical is when I see a penalty taker right before the kick, smile.

33:29And the reason I think that is that that is a penalty taker who, now not with an interaction like this with a goalkeeper, but just, you know, the penalty taker, him or her, are inside their own minds and then you see the smile that is a penalty taker in my view who is now very actively trying to have a feeling that they probably don't have because this is an uncomfortable unpleasant situation so this smile can be a sign of the wrong focus now in this particular situation i think it can be a sign of a right focus because it's so absurd the goalkeeper is trying to tackle you. The natural reaction in that situation is a smile.

34:13But the natural reaction to taking an important penalty kick with the most pressure you ever felt before in your whole life is not a smile. So there's a certain nuance here that I kind of apply when I observe these events. So interesting. So Mbappe takes that penalty, scores that penalty. He scores it. So then there's just one goal between the two teams. And then another penalty is awarded. I mean this is like the dream game from your perspective Oh this was amazing

34:41Jake Humphrey: Where were you watching it? I was at home sitting on my couch Thinking there's a book in this So let's now talk about what we can see here Because this is really interesting We've got a shot here of Lionel Messi I mean already looking like he's resigned to the fact that France are going to score this Which I think is really interesting But then you've got You've put a circle around two French players and two Argentinian players squaring up to each other whilst in the middle Mbappé is once again holding the ball getting ready to take a penalty so this is his second one and now it's make it or break it we're in the 117th minute score is 3-2 to Argentina so I mean if he misses this it's all over and also imagine the personal significance for Mbappé at this moment he's the player He's the only player who missed in the penalty shootout three years ago in the 2021 Euros.

35:38He was the big scapegoat for France back then. And the fallout from that for him personally was so significant that he almost quit the team. All the racist crap, all the stuff that happened afterwards was so much. But he's here and he knows that if he missed this shot, it's going to be back to that again. So that's him. and now the Argentinians show no mercy. They're going at him with everyone. Now the referee at this point is actually taking care of Martinez. So he's dealt with, but then you have other Argentinians. And the thing is that this penalty kick to me or this kind of pre-sequence to the kick itself illustrates a powerful principle.

36:23And that is that even though we think a penalty kick is this deeply individual task, individual performance, It is not. It's a collective performance. It's a team performance. Because in this example, if Mbappé didn't have his bodyguards, because that's what he effectively has here, the Argentinians would have done whatever they want with him. So it's about protecting your penalty taker at all costs. And you go at it with everyone you have in the best possible way. And would that be predetermined that those two players are assigned to walk into the spot with Kylian? or has it just kind of happened like that?

37:01Some teams do that. They plan it. It's deliberate. They assign one or two preferred penalty takers and they have one or two or three preferred penalty taker protectors. This is how we've come in football today. We now have another photo again before the penalty's been taken and Bape still has the ball. But there's still things happening here. There's interaction. I mean, Argentinians here, in this case, Ottomans, trying to say something. And it's funny how verbal interaction at this point from the defending point of view is often seemingly pleasant. It's said with a smile. There's an attempt to kind of connect, establish connection.

37:48and the reason for that of course is that if you go out instantly with something hostile it's very easy to just brush it off and stop it but if it's said with a smile and it's pleasant and seemingly kind of welcoming your guard goes down a little bit naturally it opens up the channel of receiving the abuse in the next kind of sequence so these processes are just very rational

38:14Jake Humphrey: so beware with a smiling assassin absolutely But it's so interesting because the number of times that we watch at home and there's a pressure moment in a game and maybe a former teammate who's now on the opposing side or maybe a current club teammate who's on the opposing side for another country will come up and start talking. And at home I'm thinking, oh, that's a nice conversation because I can see a great big beaming smile on the kind of face of the aggressor. But it's actually a really smart psychological trick. Yeah, it's very deceitful. it's manipulative because you're exploiting obviously the connection, the relationship and it's effective because you do get in It reminds us we had Prince Nassim Hamed the former world champion boxer on who was talking about the mind games he would do in the face-off before big fights where he said on some of his most effective ones was where he complimented his opponent before insulting them That's it So Nicholas Otamendi is is playing games at that point.

39:14And then focus comes on to Mbappé. So let's go through this sequence of photos that you've created here. Five photographs of Killian. Yeah, so this is the breath. Now, Mbappé in this moment takes a deep breath or seemingly deep breath. Now, he normally doesn't do it like that. So to me, this is actually also an example of the pressure did get to him in this case as well, because he needed to or felt he needed to do something special. We'll be right back after a quick word from our partners. One of the things I like about Mbappé in these situations is that he doesn't have this, we spoke about this very rigid routine.

40:01He is open to do different things and he's kind of allowing the moment to take him, which for many is a huge problem but for him when he allows his body to take over his instinct is often right. So Mbappé scores that one as well and suddenly what does that give us? Even more penalties. So the final goes to a penalty shootout and actually focus kind of shifts I think from you at this point with the slides that we've got coming up from the person taking the penalty to the person trying to save the penalties Emi Martinez. I mean this kind of became the Emi Martinez final at this point didn't it? Yeah, this was made for him.

40:41Now, he started out actually a little bit lucky because officially the penalty shootout starts with a coin toss, right? So the two captains, Loris for France was one of the captains, so the other goalkeeper was a captain. And the referee explains the procedure of the coin toss to the two captains. And in doing that, he says the first thing he does is that we're going to flip the coin now for what side we're going to take the penalties at. If it's a red or whatever, we're going to go with this side, he does, and he points to a goal. Martinez sees that, and he thought that the decision was already made for the side.

41:22So he started walking to that side, but the coin hadn't been flipped yet. And then the referee flips the coin and it becomes that side, at which point Martinez is already in the 16-meter box. And he's moving around in that box and he is essentially making that his home. So this is now his home turf. And whoever comes into that, the referees, the other goalkeeper, the next penalty taker, they come to his home turf. That's how he acts. And this, I mean, they're obviously tiny, small details and it's highly speculative. but for me this is like his dominance began then he he started dominating this shootout by basically

42:03Jake Humphrey: welcoming the rest of them to his home can i ask you about the coin toss though like because sometimes captains get a choice of who goes first or who goes second what advice would you offer to any captain that is presented with a choice like that so so the research on this is actually fascinating because studies came out like a decade or so ago pointing out very clearly that the team that goes first, they have a 60 % advantage of winning the penalty shootout. That much? 60%. And this has been widely cited and FIFA almost changed the rules of the game because of this. They started experimenting with the alternating order and so forth.

42:46And because of this, and I still hear this, Every time there's a shootout, I feel like TV commentators and such, they speak about this 60 % difference. But since then, other studies have come out with bigger samples and a wider sample showing that it's actually not 60%. The difference is 50.5 % versus 49.5%. So there's actually no difference at all. So the research, the data on this suggests it doesn't matter. in everyone's belief it still matters so everyone kind of picks first when they get a chance now what would I advise I mean you could you could go with that because probably it's so deep in people's and players minds that we should go first to have the initiative and so forth so it doesn't hurt to go first but yeah the data is what it is okay well we've got a bit of footage here shot by one of the fans in the stadium let's have a look what are we watching so this is Mbappé's penalty so the first shot of the shootout.

43:50He places it at his favorite corner, which is left. Martinez is after it, but he can't stop it. Martinez then grabs the ball to kind of give it to the penalty taker for his own team, but also probably to prevent the opponent's goalkeeper to take hold of the ball and do something with it,

44:11Jake Humphrey: which we'll get back to probably in a moment or two. So it's all happening on Martinez's timescales at this moment in time. He has already kind of started setting the premises. And the premise here is set between him and the penalty taker, but also importantly between him and the referee. Yeah. So what could Lloris have done to try and change the direction of the trouble? If someone is about to get the momentum and kind of take control of this event, you have to disrupt it so you have to do something different you can't play by that by those rules that are set by the opposition so you have to go in and you have to intervene and you have to do something unexpected you have to just break the rhythm which is so hard of course but these are the kind of elements of this type of psychological I love this part of the conversation because I think that we've now got an image on the screen of Martinez having just saved a penalty in the air, fist raised.

45:16He's about five feet in the air. He looks like he's even higher than the goal. And the conversation after this final was that he was being a showman. But as you've just explained, this isn't him being a showman. This is him being a disruptor. This is him taking the missed penalty and using it to apply even more pressure to the subsequent French penalty takers. Have I read that right? He's disrupting in the sense that he takes up space. He takes up time. he's taking possession in their minds basically by being so visible and he's showing dominance this is a game of dominance we did a study now 15 years ago where we even we didn't look at goalkeepers but we looked at penalty takers and what happens after a penalty shot that has been scored and a player either celebrates wildly and grandly or they don't celebrate at all and we see direct effects If you celebrate big, the next opponent penalty taker, that chance of him missing goes down.

46:16And the chance of your next teammate to score goes up, significantly so. So this has been replicated in labs by other researchers afterwards. So there's an effect here. And it's probably an effect of dominance versus submission. And the penalty shootout provides just an extraordinary lab for that.

46:35Jake Humphrey: And did that research, so that looks at the penalty taker, did it look at the effects of the goalkeeper and whether they celebrate big after a shot is missed? So we didn't do that in our study, but other researchers came after us and they kind of replicated these conditions in a lab, and they found that. The same effect? They found the same effects. Wow. So there are interactive emotional processes here, and that's what makes this so fascinating. Well, let's have a look then at the video of that celebration shot by the fan again. I mean it was over the top it was so over the top it was like they'd won the World Cup at that point and I mean we know the majority of penalty shootouts are won by a team that has missed at least once so making one save doesn't really mean that you won at all of course you're stepping in the right direction but it's not more than that basically everything that we think we believe about penalties we believe wrongly which is why this is so powerful So what's this game?

47:33So here we see him and Martinez just grabs the ball. Again, he dictates everything. He takes control. And the referee allows him to take control. He allows him to just hold the ball. And when the referee goes for it, because now he wants it, he throws it away in not the most pleasant manner. Now, of course, it's not random that he decided to throw it so that Chouameni needs to walk 15 meters to get it. So Chouameni now knows that here's a goalkeeper who is doing whatever he can to get into my head. And there's a referee that allows him to do whatever he can to get into my head. So basically, Tramini feels, if he felt alone before this shot, he feels even more alone when he gets it.

48:14He can still recover. He can still cope. In this particular situation, he was not able to do that. And you think that him missing that penalty didn't have nothing to do with the fact that Martinez was playing all of those games? I think this added to it. I mean, when the researchers have looked at, other than me, but also me, what is the impact of a goalkeeper playing these games, they find that performance goes down by approximately 10 % for the penalty taker. So goalkeeper making tricks, doing different things to disturb, 10 % down in performance for the penalty taker. Wow. And what's this? what Emi Martinez of course does after he has grabbed the ball as he did on the previous occasion and his next teammate is up of course Emi Martinez makes sure that now he gets the ball to not let the French goalkeeper get it so this is a defensive move in a sense that's also interesting as well because it feels like he's in control and he's passing that control to his teammate you know what I mean this is our shootout so now you get the ball and that confidence I think gets passed from teammate to teammate yeah there's so many symbolic actions here when you're playing this type of game and he does it well I do think it's nice to say at the end that he was like that don't you think with Martínez like just something about the fact that that's him playing a character yeah whatever I mean an important part of this I think is that so this is the start this is him welcoming first the French goalkeeper into the area welcome to my house then he welcomes Mbappé into his house with a handshake and it's pleasant and it's nice, which again kind of lowers the guard for the opponents.

49:59But also he shows the referee that I'm a nice guy. And he starts like that and then he escalates progressively more and more, more and more aggressive, more and more hostile. But because he started so slowly, the referee allows him to do that. and it ends with this moment here where Koulemouane comes up to take a shot now Koulemouane ends up scoring but I mean Martinez is having this kind of pretend conversation with a member of the French coaching staff telling things about Chouamani while Chouamani of course hears it now I don't think the coaching staff hears this because they're too far away but Koulemouane hears it and that's the only point then also at some point here he says to him and you can easily kind of read the lips he's saying I've watched you, I've watched you he says and at this moment he actually does get a yellow card, he should have probably gotten it five minutes ago but he gets it here An amazing insight into how one man can end up dictating a penalty shootout that actually involves 22 players 2 managers, 30 coaches probably tens of thousands of people in the stadium and millions around the world Yeah exactly Emi Martinez so he has won the last six penalty shootouts he took part in.

51:19Obviously not single-handedly. There was another team there, but he had a big piece of that. Six penalty shootouts in a row, he has won.

51:27Jake Humphrey: So interesting. And has he demonstrated the same behaviors in all six of them or has he reined it in our role today? He has a range. So it's not the same, but the principles are the same. He famously, for example, in the Copa America penalty shootout a few years ago, during the pandemic, we could actually hear what he said. Because usually you can't hear that, but now with no people in the stadium, you could hear. And the things he said to the opposing penalty takers were, well, I don't probably even think you want that on air here, because they were pretty vile. so that was more of a verbal kind of approach and then there are different kind of versions of what we saw in the final I've loved the fact that a lot of the things that we think are correct about penalties are actually incorrect and you've helped us to rethink thinking I wonder whether AI makes a difference here I wonder whether we continue to be confused by the stats and the reality around penalties or whether the introduction of AI and large language models and deep thinking is actually going to make penalties a much more data-driven process in the future?

52:42Yeah, it's obviously a very timely question. I want to say this about that, and that is that we adopt new ways to look at this and we adapt our behavior so quickly now. I mean, it's so different now just from three, four, five years ago. So you have to stay ahead of the game. You have to be prepared for what your opponents are bringing. Not just, you know, does the goalkeeper have a piece of paper with left, right, left, right on it. It's so much more than that. There's so many nuances. And I hope to see that this World Cup, that teams have prepared for a little bit more complexity. And it's not good enough, what happened just three, four months ago.

53:32because players, they figure out new ways to do this. And you can prepare for that with the data to some extent. But then suddenly there's an Emi Martinez that jumps up on the scene and makes you have to throw all your plans away. So you have to adapt to that. But of course, you need to try to prepare for that as well. So this is a fascinating game and it's becoming more and more fascinating as we play it.

53:59Jake Humphrey: But talking about this World Cup, you told us about the Norwegian squad. There was a player that hadn't been selected. Yes. So generally, I don't want to speak so much about Norway because this is our first World Cup in so long. And I mean, it's so huge for all of us. And so my views on Norway, if they in some way can be used against Norway, then I'm not going there. But this one I'm going to share. And that is that we saw, for example, that England picked an Ivan Toni for their squad, which is, I mean, a truly specialist penalty taker and one that you want in a penalty shootout. And I think it makes sense to have one or two players like that in a squad.

54:55Now, Norway did not pick Aron Dunham. and Aron Dunham, he plays for Toulouse in France and he was one of the players who were like on the brink of making it to the squad. And I saw that and I was thinking, oh no, he should have been there. And he should have been there for three reasons. One is he probably is the best penalty taker we have in Norway. A truly specialist, goalkeeper, dependent penalty taker. Brilliant, very secure shots. Second thing is, I mean, he's the funniest guy in the squad. like he's the guy you want around for just the whole social element of things which will be important when you're staying together for so long and the third one which is a little bit more obscure he's a trained hairdresser so he actually does the hair of the players of the other players and he has done that on previous camps so now they have to outsource that I guess so there's obviously a really famous clip of Cristiano Ronaldo here it is saying it's always the same for you for you it's normal to score that lovely line that he says you can cross the barrier I mean I think that is such a fascinating insight into Cristiano Ronaldo's have you seen this clip before on social oh mate there's a great clip where someone says oh self talk isn't very important and then it cuts to all of these athletes talking to themselves telling themselves they can do it and this is him just ahead of a it's actually before a free kick not a penalty but that little insight into him telling himself that it's normal to score have you noticed that his psychological approach to the game is a really vital part of his penalty-taking abilities.

56:33I mean, I noticed Cristiano Ronaldo with respect to penalties for the first time for real in 2006 quarterfinal. Please, let's not talk about that. I think you asked for it. I'm going to talk about him exclusively. I think he took about five seconds after the whistle went before he started moving towards the ball. And it was pure presence, focus, determination, a big, as you refer to, like a psychological job that he did with himself. There's so much power in the way that he stood before he started running towards the ball. so that was an eye opener for me back in 2006 and then he has stuck to this approach to some extent, he already did that for a while, but then you could tell that he kind of I don't know exactly what happened if he got tired or if he because he loosened it up a little bit, it became less kind of this very machine like approach, maybe like you alluded to in an earlier question that it's not so important for him anymore.

57:55But for him to perform, and I think he knows and everyone else knows that this massive emotional determination or ability to persuade yourself, I think is just essential for his game.

58:08Jake Humphrey: Is there something around the personality of successful penalty takers? I've read some research, I think you were involved in it, with a German team in the second tier, or it might have been an amateur German team, where they looked at personality questionnaires of those that were preventative and those that were promotion-focused. And it wasn't that it made them better penalty takers, it was the instructions the coaches gave to each of those personalities determined how successful they were. Yeah, I think you're onto something there. And to cite one of our studies that we published actually now 20 years ago, but that's still kind of been replicated by other researchers after that, so it's still the case, that is that if you're in a penalty shootout and you're towards the end, I mean, every shot will be directly decisive for the outcome, right?

59:06But you can have a positively framed shot and you can have a negatively framed shot. The positively framed shot is, if I score, we instantly win the shootout. And a negatively framed shot will be, well, if I score, we just continue with more shots. But if I miss, we instantly lose the shootout. Now, the difference in outcome for those two shots is almost 30%. The ones who, if I score, we instantly win, they score 30 % more of those shots than the opposite. And this goes to that same kind of mindset. See, if you can put yourself in that positive mindset that, you know, I desperately just want to score, which is so much more beneficial than I desperately don't want to miss.

59:50So that goes to mindset and is, I think, a really strong part of this.

59:54Jake Humphrey: Because it comes to the heart, Jake did an interview with Stuart Broad, the England cricketer, who was talking about Bas Bacullum, the coach when he first came in with his basball approach. and he was giving them the message of play to win, play every shot to win, don't play defensive shots, we want to excite the fans. And he spoke about how it almost was a virus in the dressing room that eventually it caught hold where that became their culture. Now that's a brilliant way to, not just penalties of course, but just performing in these moments in general. So playing to win and not to lose. He also told us, do you remember, we said, was there ever a time where the coach told a player off for trying to play a match-winning shot and losing the match because of it?

1:00:44And he said, not once. And that's the other interesting thing about if you're going to instill a play-to-win mentality, it only takes you once to criticize a player playing to win and the whole thing's broken. It has to happen. And I mean, in football, there are hundreds of thousands of coaches, right? that will tell you after you did not make it. So, of course, it's about trying to kind of preserve that bubble that you're in in this moment because you know stuff's going to happen afterwards. Correct. All right, we've now got a few quickfire questions for you. And interestingly, we thought because your book, Pressure, is so fascinating and it's not just for people that love football, we would ask you a few questions and they're quite quickfire, so some short answers about non-football related things.

1:01:30So your best advice for someone to deal with pressure as an individual? Stay ahead of the game, be proactive, start early, train, find individual techniques that work for you and surround yourself with teammates who can protect and support you.

1:01:46Jake Humphrey: Great. Your best advice to parents that may be looking to lift pressure from a child? Yeah, I mean, parents are huge with respect to just taking down the threats of every single situation so whatever they can do to decrease the importance of the outcome it's it's a long game and and and parents more than anyone should be supporting that long game for their kids your advice to a student who sees years of hard work building up to just one exam how would you help them overcome the pressure there um i mean the same same there it i it will take you far, of course, knowing your stuff. But I mean, also as a professor, I see students

1:02:37fail or don't get as much as they could because they just kind of practice the material. They don't practice the exam because you have to practice the exam. And that's both the actual cognitive element of the exam, but also dealing with that situation, which will take down a lot of students, unfortunately.

1:02:58Jake Humphrey: And what advice would you give to a leader in business that thinks that amplifying pressure delivers performance from their people? So there's a time for everything. So amplifying pressure in the sense of setting a high bar and having a culture where we are striving to achieve excellence throughout our processes and so forth, that, of course, can be a good thing. But when you get down to these high stakes moments, you want to turn it around, right? You want to have a very different climate. You want to have a different type of communication. that doesn't mean that you're gonna you know as we spoke about earlier smile and pretend as if this is not hard or pretend that the consequences aren't there it's about taking that seriously but it's collectively focusing on the job that we have to do together and supporting each other in making that great and your your final piece of advice for people to live their own version of a high performance life?

1:04:14What would you like to leave them thinking about? I would definitely seek inspiration from podcasts like this, but also now with the World Cup, these athletes who are going about doing what they're doing in front of millions around the world because these high level performers, they're humans. They're just like the rest of us. they're struggling with the same things as the rest of us. They're feeling the same type of stress as you and I are doing when we are taking that exam or that job interview or asking a difficult question in a group setting or whatever it is. So I would so seek inspiration from them and I would try to, like I said earlier, just be a little bit ahead of the game, be proactive, train, prepare and like Martin Nødegård said then the outcome will be what it is there you go thank you so much if people want to find out more or learn more they can check out your amazing book Pressure which is available from all good bookstores or online and Gia thank you very much for joining us and I think everyone that listens to this episode will now be watching penalty kicks at this World Cup through a very different lens and I hope there's something just a little bit different for you to get excited about me too thank you so much Damien Jake I thought what was really interesting actually was that I'd spent certainly all of my life as a football fan watching the penalty kick the actual kick of the ball and thinking that's the most important part of any penalty and actually if we look at the analysis that I've done for years as a television presenter and by the way all the analysis that will be happening at this World Cup not just in the UK but on every TV channel around the world when there's a penalty shootout or a penalty kick what will the analysis be of?

1:06:06Jake Humphrey: Whether they scored or missed. Will there be any analysis of the behaviour of the goalkeeper, of the players in the centre circle, of the routine that the striker goes through beforehand? Zero. And this is a good reminder of what high performance is here to do. It's to take a topic that we all have an opinion on or think we're knowledgeable about and get us to rethink that because so many of the things that Gia mentioned, we have the complete opposite perception and we're missing the point on a whole load of things. And if that's how we feel about penalties, imagine what it's like for the rest of our lives.

1:06:40It must be happening everywhere.

1:06:41Jake Humphrey: Yeah, but imagine that we've come away from it going, wow, we've learned so much about who goes first or goalkeepers dominating an area or who passes the ball to a teammate. And we're learning as well. So we can now watch the penalty shootout with just a greater understanding and appreciation of the complexity and the context in which it's all operating rather than just get caught in that binary. He missed and therefore he's mentally weak or he's scored and therefore that demonstrates mental strength. It's understanding the environment. I thought it was so rich in detail and nuance and just giving us a deeper understanding of what happens in the shadows rather than just the spotlight, which is what we love discussing.

1:07:26And is there much research into why we don't really see it for what it is? What's that about?

1:07:32Jake Humphrey: Well, again, when I was listening to gear, I was thinking of the famous Dunning-Kruger law. It's named after Professors Dunning and Kruger, as it implies. Shop horror. Yeah, but they came up with the idea. It dates back to, in the early 1990s, there was a guy called MacArthur Wheeler that went and robbed the bank. And he was caught within hours of robbing the bank because CCTV footage had his face perfectly visible. and when he was interviewed by the policeman afterwards, he was like, how did you catch me? And he showed him the CCTV footage and he'd read that lemon juice obscures an image. It's part of invisible ink.

1:08:13Jake Humphrey: So he'd smeared his face in lemon juice and thought that that would make him invisible to the TV cameras. Now, Professor Dunning and Kruger looked at this and was like, to be that stupid, you almost don't know how stupid you are. So that's what the Dunning-Kruger law says, that if you don't know what you don't know, it's impossible to know. but we're not saying that we're stupid for having a different opinion about penalties to the one that we had now having spoken to Gier but what we are saying is how could we possibly know because it never gets discussed what else happens around a penalty kick yeah exactly so that's why Gier is an expert in that so coming at it from a place of humility and curiosity of telling us about that tell us what Martinez did tell us what Mbappe did that was so effective that then takes us into a place of curiosity and humility rather than just making these sweeping judgments about a player's mental fragility or their mental strength.

1:09:05Jake Humphrey: We now understand the whole context in which they're operating and understand how we can enhance it and get the best out of it. Yeah, I've got a buddy watching the record today, a guy called Nick, and I said to him, like, what did you like about that conversation with Gia? And interestingly, not being a footballer or necessarily that interested in Harry Kane or England's penalties, he was like, well, the fact that the behavior of one person doesn't just add to their own self-confidence, it also erodes the self-confidence of others. And, you know, Nick works in the tech world and the business world, and I think, like, there are so many parallels between what we're talking about here with gear and the fact that this applies instantaneously to the world of business.

1:09:47Jake Humphrey: Yeah, we use the term being a disruptor in terms of in relation to Emi Martinez, that he came and disrupted the social norms. He held the ball longer than he was supposed to. He was the one that was sort of liaising with referees. He was throwing the ball away and causing inconvenience. How much of our modern-day landscape has been determined by people that came in as disruptors, played a different role to the game? You know, the one that often gets cited is you think of Airbnb versus the traditional hotel room, Uber versus traditional taxis. Blockbuster v. Netflix. all those great cliches that we sort of get hammered they're all by people that come along and play a slightly different set of rules and that's what that's the stuff that then you recognise how that causes pressure that other people can't necessarily withstand very interesting I know you were instrumental in getting gear on the show so thank you mate no I love his book I love his work and it's been a real privilege to get to sit and share his brilliant research with our brilliant audience absolutely and if you enjoyed that please pass it to a friend tell someone you know about the kind of conversations that we have here on high performance and this is especially a message to those that listened rather than watch that conversation if you if you want to see the footage if you want to see the photos that gear talks about honestly i think it really brings it to life so you can check us out on youtube you can also watch these podcasts on apple podcast as well as just listen to them but please hit subscribe please hit like please leave us a comment please share these conversations the only people that can build high performance is you and And we really appreciate all the support you've given us so far.

1:11:22So please keep on doing that. Enjoy the World Cup. And I think the fascinating thing now, myself, Damian, hopefully you as well, we'll all be watching what happens in this World Cup when we get a penalty shootout, which we inevitably will. I think we'll all watch it through very different eyes. Thank you to Gia. Thank you for watching.