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Why we shouldn’t use penalties when assessing a forward's quality:
A thread
A thread
There’s been a lot of talk over the past year or so about whether penalties should count as actual goals. Obviously, this is a silly question. If your team has scored a penalty, the scoreboard moves up, and your team has scored. A penalty goal is still a goal.
However, some players, such as Ciro Immobile, Bruno Fernandes, and even Cristiano Ronaldo have been branded “penalty merchants”, and whilst we shouldn’t criticize players for being good penalty takers, is there some truth to these claims?
I think I should clarify that I’m not going after those players specifically, especially because all of them can be described as world class, rather, I’m trying to explain why penalties can inflate a player’s natural goal scoring ability.
“Penalties should be counted because scoring them is very difficult and requires skill”.
I absolutely agree that penalties are not at all easy and shouldn’t be brushed away, however, it should be pointed out that saving a penalty is even more difficult than scoring one.
I absolutely agree that penalties are not at all easy and shouldn’t be brushed away, however, it should be pointed out that saving a penalty is even more difficult than scoring one.
76% of right footed penalties and 74% of left footed penalties are scored. I can be a poor penalty taker and only score 60% of the time, but if I take 10 penalties, I’m going to score 6 extra goals, not because I’m a good penalty taker, but because they’re so difficult to save.
Is scoring penalties a skill? Sure, but does scoring a bunch of them automatically make you a great goal scorer? Not really. Milivojevic scored more goals than Rashford in 18/19, but if you stuck him up front for United and took away his penalties, he’d struggle to even score 5
A great goal scorer either gets into great goal scoring positions, or finishes really well. Someone like Milivojevic is good at neither, but his goal tally suggested that he was a great goal scorer. Take out penalties, and he had just 2 goals, which paints a more accurate picture
Goal scoring is its own ability, and penalty taking is its own ability. But if you’re going to tell me that someone is a great goal scorer, show me their non-penalty stats, the way you would only show me their penalty stats to show me how good of a penalty taker they are
To reiterate, scoring penalties is not easy, and if you can then great, but penalty goals should not be used to show how good of a forward someone is, or how good they are purely at scoring goals.
(Note: Not saying penalties should be removed from golden boot tallies either)
(Note: Not saying penalties should be removed from golden boot tallies either)
