At this year's FIFA World Cup in Brazil, winners and losers will be decided with just one kick of the ball. As matches in the knockout stages draw undecided players, they will face the ultimate test. Heroes and villains will be made, reputations sealed or destroyed. Everything rests on this one kick. For England fans, this is all-too-familiar. England fans know what happens next. But for the four teams competing in Brazil this summer, help is at hand. Senior visiting fellow at the University of Bath and author of the book "How to School Science in the Beautiful Game," Dr. Ken Bray has studied the stats behind the shootout. The success rates for a penalty in normal play are about 80%. It drops to around 75% in a shootout for reasons that are very clear. In a shootout, for example, you can't follow up on a shot and score as you can in a normal penalty. You have to do the business with one shot. Secondly, you must pick from less experienced players in your team. You can't simply use the best strikers. And finally, of course, the keeper gets more and more savvy as the shootout progresses, making it more and more likely to make a save. The teams that do best are teams like Germany and Argentina. Germany, in particular, has won 80% of their encounters. Then we go down a kind of staircase of shame until we reach England, who've been successful on only 17% of occasions. And I think the reasons for these differences are quite clear. It's a failure to prepare mentally and a failure to take practicing penalties really seriously. So how do you take the perfect penalty? Step 1: Selecting the players. Picking the right players for a penalty shootout is a vital...
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