Mon, Jun 28, 2010 page19

• 2010 FIFA WORLD CUP: Body language key to penalty kick’s direction, accuracy

  • AP
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  Penalty takers can give away the direction of their shot by the way they move their bodies or plant their feet, a US doctoral student found in a study.

  Gabriel Diaz of Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in upstate New York found that there are certain clues that goalkeepers can pick up on to determine which way a penalty shooter will go.

  “The most reliable source of information is the direction to which the planted foot is pointing,” Diaz said on Saturday in a telephone interview. “If you drew a line from the heel to the toe, where that line would project determines where the ball will go.”

  Diaz said, however, that penalty takers can sometimes send the ball in the opposite direction to trick a goalkeeper, but to do that, the penalty taker will compensate in other ways to maintain balance.

  “Perhaps you are changing your base of support. You are going to compensate this change elsewhere on the body,” Diaz said. “Maybe move your arm in a way to stabilize your posture.”

  That, Diaz found, can mean that shooters can give themselves away by doing the same thing every time they aim either to the left of the goalkeeper or to the right.

  With the World Cup being played in South Africa, penalty shootouts are becoming a hot topic of conversation, and with FIFA acknowledging on Saturday that the Jabulani ball being used may have something wrong with it, contributing to its erratic behavior, penalty kicks could become all the more important.

  Diaz, who based his study on different experiments involving university students and used cameras, software and sensors as well as computer analysis, said his theory would be difficult to prove in a professional soccer match.

  “Professional soccer players may not have the luxury of that extra time, and also professional soccer players are much better at placing the ball at the further side of the goal,” Diaz said. “I can’t say for sure in real world situations what would be the best thing for the goalkeeper to do.”

  Oliver Kahn, a former Germany and Bayern Munich goalkeeper, spoke about the art of saving penalties in Johannesburg on Friday.

  “You can read a lot from the body language of the shooter and where he will be shooting,” Kahn said. “It is a psychological game between the goalkeeper and the taker. It has a lot to do with eye contact and body language.”

  Another recent study looked at penalties from the shooter’s point of view. Psychologist Greg Wood of Exeter University in Britain tracked the eye movements of penalty-takers and noted how players about to kick a ball could be distracted by the goalkeepers in front of them.

  From whichever direction you look at it, it doesn’t leave much time for the shooters or the keepers.

  “If you only have a tenth of a second to read someone’s body language,” said Petr Cech, who plays for the Czech Republic and English club Chelsea, “it becomes difficult.”
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