Shooting penalties in a football game looks at first sight like flipping a coin - there seems to be no way to predict whether a player will shoot left or right. Didier Deschamps still believes it is the case and, despite the defeat against Argentina at the WC 2022 final in Doha, the trainer of the French football team said in a recent interview that he does not intend to specifically work on penalties in the future. Since 1998, French national teams or clubs have taken part in 16 penalty shoot-outs in international competitions, winning only 3 of them, including another WC final lost against Italy in 2006 - Barthez and Lloris stopped none of the penalties.
Although there seems to be no science behind predicting the behavior of a shooter, there are however possibilities to reduce the chances of success of the shooter (or improve the chances of success of the goalkeeper). Some goalkeepers have better results stopping penalties because they have observed their opponents, analyzed statistics and remembered their behavior. If you improve the odds of stopping a ball from 50% to 60%, you have already decreased uncertainty and improved your chances of winning the shoot-outs. Same for the players, by observing ("knowing") the goalkeeper.
Deschamps states that there is no way to reproduce the situation, especially that of a final, as there is too much chaos and too many variables, hence his lack of interest in working on shoot-outs with his team. In this case, there was no point in sending humans in space in the 60s, as nobody has ever flown in space, hence not knowing what would happen beforehand. Nonetheless, scientists and engineers succeeded by building models and reducing odds. Similarly, some shooters and goalkeepers have better outcomes than others as they have done their homework before.
At the end of the day, what we are doing in #cybersecurity and more globally in #riskmanagement, is to find ways to reduce the odds by building models and therefore take better decisions based on tangible data and observation, and not on gut feeling and cognitive biases.
Alex Sidorenko RISK-ACADEMY Christophe de Cacqueray Patrice THIRIEZ
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