Jenderal Sudirman Cup Penalty Analysis

By Bagus Anindito / @ditovisco

Sunday night of January the24th became the last match of Jenderal Sudirman Cup (JSC). The competition in which we witnessed Mitra Kukar unforgettable win after beating Semen Padang 1-2 at Gelora Bung Karno, Jakarta, had left us a few things that we can get and learn from, one of them is about penalty kick. The tournament has a unique regulation to determine the winner of each match on the group stages. If the 90-minutes ended with a draw, the match would go straight to penalties. Until the final stage, there has been several penalty occasions happened from all teams participating in this tournament.

Initially, we analyze it by having a general look at when those penalties were taken from, which team and player has taken and faced the most of PK, followed by the process of the penalty itself; succeeded and failed attempts, direction, and the goalkeeper reaction towards the spot-kicks.

It has been recorded that there were 148 penalty kicks attempted by numbers of team in JSC. More than 80% of them were from the shootout, while the rest happened in the 90 minutes period. The runners-up, Semen Padang, have been the busiest team in taking and facing the PK by 27 and 29 attempts respectively, with 6 happened on the normal time. Meanwhile, Surabaya United had been the team which only had one chance to score goal from the spot. In contrast, Persib was the only team that was neither taking nor facing a penalty kick in the competition.

Moving on to the players, both locals and foreign had shared the same amount of proportion in taking a penalty, at least 2 chances on the normal time. Semen Padang’s Jandia Eka Putra was no doubt the only keeper who had the most of his time to keep the goal from penalty kick. On the other side, Persib’s goalkeeper, I Made Wirawan, his reflexes was never meant to be tested by the opposite team’s penalty attempt.

Now, take a deep breath and delve into more detail on how the penalty is converted into a goal and also several things related to the conversion. It was mentioned before that 148 penalties were taken in the tournament. Based on the data we collected, nearly 75% of them successfully converted, while 16% were well read and saved by the goalkeeper, and the rest were off target. Still based on these figures, foreign players had 38 shots of penalty attempts with 31 of were on goal while the homegrown had it in the back of the net by 79 from 126 shots.

Unsurprising fact came from foot preferences. Only 14 out of 110 shots were taken by the lefties. Furthermore, 13 out of 38 shots had either gone high, wide, or hit the woodwork. To analyze where the shots direct to, we have broken down the goal into 9 spots.

As you can see, most of the players tend to pick his left side as his goal direction preferences. At least 49 successful attempts went through the right bottom and mid corner of the opposite goalkeeper while 12 others that went into the same pocket were saved. Only 4 players here who were really expert in placing the ball into top corner (see number 1) Bali United’s Fadil Sausu, PS TNI’s Hardiantono, PBR’s Kim Jeffrey, and Semen Padang’s Irsyad Maulana. Pusamania Borneo’s Srdan Lopicic became the only player who were successful in converting most of his penalty attempts (5) whereas both of PSM’s Syamsul Chaeruddin attempts were saved.

29 successful penalties were in fact read and nearly saved by Jandia Eka Putra, PSM’s Dimas Galih Pratama, and Pusamania Borneo’s Galih Sudaryono. Most of the goalkeepers were able to deny at least one shot directed to all spots except number 1 and 3.

There are a few important points that we can grab from this JSC’s “raining penalty goals”. First one being, most of the players competing in the tournament were undoubtedly capable of scoring goals from the spot. However, perhaps locals should learn more on how to get the most out of their penalty chances knowing that there are numbers of foreigners who can score from the spot. The next point came from the shot direction. Majority of penalty taker were using his right foot and placed the ball in towards goalkeeper’s right side.

It might be argued that bending it to the opposite side of the penalty taker will be easier to actually score then placing it to the similar side and ends up being off target. The last point lies on the goalkeeper. The statistics shows that failed penalty kicks were far less than the successful one. It means a few of Indonesian goalkeeper still need to work on reflexes and have some more experiences in defending penalty kick.

Some people argue that penalty tends to be on the taker’s side despite how good the goalkeeper is. However, chances of saving the penalty kick are still out there and who knows it will outnumber the chances of scoring one.