Why some footballers ‘choke’ during penalty shootouts revealed

A scientific study has found the reason some football players ‘choke’ when taking a penalty kick. 

Brain scans reveal that in the crucible of competition, some people activate a region of their brain called the pre-frontal cortex which is linked with long-term thinking. 

This leads to them overthinking the consequences of their attempt and dwelling on the potential ramifications if they were to miss, and this inhibits their performance. 

The research effectively reveals the mechanism behind the common sporting phrase ‘getting in your own head’. 

In football, an inherently low-scoring sport, the opportunity to score from 12 yards with just a sprawling ‘keeper to beat is a prized opportunity, but one filled with pressure. 

The enormous personal responsibility falls on the shoulders of one player who is tasked with thrashing the ball into the back of the net. 

But this is easier said than done, and not all are as clinically effective as Alan Shearer, Matt Le Tissier or Cristiano Ronaldo. 

Many high profile misses can only be attributed to the high-stakes environment. 

For example, the notorious 1996 effort by the now-England manager Gareth Southgate, which led to defeat at the hands of the Germans and a missed opportunity to play in the Euro ’96 final.

Others, like Beckham’s slip against Turkey in qualifying for Euro ’04 and Iñigo Idiakez’s fluffed chance in the 2007 Championship play-off semi-final second leg for Southampton against his old club, Derby County, stick in the memory.  

Pictured, David Beckham’s penalty slip against Turkey in qualifying for Euro ’04 against Turkey 

Both Beckham and Idiakez were noted dead ball specialists, capable of audacious accuracy and extravagant curl. 

But both, when confronted with a high-pressure penalty kick, failed to even hit the target. The reason for this is not physical, but mental, experts say. 

‘How can it be that football players with a near perfect control over the ball (they can very precisely kick a ball over more than 50 meters) fail to score a penalty kick from only 11 meters?’ asks co-author of the new study, Max Slutter, an MSc student at the University of Twente, the Netherlands. 

‘Obviously, huge psychological pressure plays a role, but why does this pressure cause a missed penalty? We tried to answer this by measuring the brain activity of football players during the physical execution of a penalty kick.’ 

He recruited 22 volunteers to kick penalties and measured their brain activity with a functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS) headset.

The study is the first to investigate the neuroscience behind choking under realistic conditions outside a laboratory. 

‘We found that players who were able to perform under pressure activated task-relevant areas of the brain,’ explained Dr Nattapong Thammasan, of the University of Twente. 

‘For example, increased activation of the motor cortex was related to performing under pressure. 

‘This seems logical, as movement is one of the most important elements when taking a penalty.’ 

But they also saw that players who felt anxious and tend to miss penalties have their pre-frontal cortex light up. 

The researchers believe the technology, described in Frontiers in Computer Science, can help players by letting them know how their brains are behaving.

They could train themselves to activate beneficial regions in high-pressure moments, such as stepping up to take a penalty while carrying the hopes of a nation.