Panda doesn’t have a fixed pattern and her comfort zone is on the left

There are footballers who have a pattern in launches. They throw, for example, three to the left and two to the right. Goalkeepers and their coaches are studying them more and more. At Alavés, I met a coach who had followed the cadet pitchers. In the case of Borja Iglesias, he doesn’t have it. Of the 14 penalties he took with Betis, he took 7 on the left, 6 on the right and one in the center. When he throws it to the left, as he was stopped by Edgar Badía, he does it by lifting the ball a little. When he does it from the right — and the goalkeeper’s left — he usually hits them.

Technicians do a lot of reporting, although when it comes to goalkeepers when they are seen in front of the pitcher, they don’t analyze the statistics. Sometimes they decide at the last minute. The shooting mode also changes depending on the game. You don’t shoot the same with a loose score as when things get tough and that penalty can decide the result. When a player looks tight, he usually looks for safety and tries the shot where he feels most confident. Context is a thing to consider when instructing a goalkeeper about an opposition scorer. In the case of Borja Iglesias, I would say that his comfort zone is just to the left, to the right of the goalkeeper. The one who was stopped by Edgar.

So far, 75 penalty kicks have been taken in the League, and 23 have been missed. The success rate is around 70%, below the usual rate and below that set by the main European competitions. The usual average in Spain, if we look at the series in recent years, tells us that one out of every four maximum penalties that have been taken is missed.

Julian of Castile He is a performance consultant and was an analyst at Club Deportivo Alavés