I was reading an article about Ronaldo earlier and it reminded me that when Portugal lost to Spain on pens, Ronaldo didn't even take one because he was waiting to be the 5th taker, and it didn't get that far.
My view with pens is pretty simple, just take them in order of penalty taking ability, starting with the best. Maybe you might tweak this a bit if there are players who really don't fancy it for whatever reason. To me it's illogical not to have your normal penalty taker take the first penalty, but there seems to be some school of thought around people wanting them to take the 'last' (which is a fallacy anyway as it isn't known at the start of the shootout which penalty will be the last) - I guess because that's potentially when the pressure is greatest - miss and you are out, score and you win etc. But that in itself doesn't stand up to game theory analysis, as each penalty taken is as valuable as any other, a penalty scored or missed counts the same whenever it is taken.
I think this is nonsense and you want to get ahead in the shootout as early as possible, or at least stay level. The Spain-Portugal game is a classic example of where having worse penalty takers earlier in the shootout can backfire because the competition ends before your best takers have even stepped up. Had the shootout continued longer, they might have found that e.g. their 6th or 7th takers were better than the Spanish ones. But they never got that opportunity because they didn't front-load their best takers.
Even if you subscribe to the theory that you want an experienced taker at the 'business end' of the shootout, you could make a counter argument that if you got ahead in the shootout earlier, your team would be under less pressure anyway. So you are increasing the likelihood of having to take a pressure penalty by backloading the best takers, even if they may be better equipped to deal with that pressure.
My view with pens is pretty simple, just take them in order of penalty taking ability, starting with the best. Maybe you might tweak this a bit if there are players who really don't fancy it for whatever reason. To me it's illogical not to have your normal penalty taker take the first penalty, but there seems to be some school of thought around people wanting them to take the 'last' (which is a fallacy anyway as it isn't known at the start of the shootout which penalty will be the last) - I guess because that's potentially when the pressure is greatest - miss and you are out, score and you win etc. But that in itself doesn't stand up to game theory analysis, as each penalty taken is as valuable as any other, a penalty scored or missed counts the same whenever it is taken.
I think this is nonsense and you want to get ahead in the shootout as early as possible, or at least stay level. The Spain-Portugal game is a classic example of where having worse penalty takers earlier in the shootout can backfire because the competition ends before your best takers have even stepped up. Had the shootout continued longer, they might have found that e.g. their 6th or 7th takers were better than the Spanish ones. But they never got that opportunity because they didn't front-load their best takers.
Even if you subscribe to the theory that you want an experienced taker at the 'business end' of the shootout, you could make a counter argument that if you got ahead in the shootout earlier, your team would be under less pressure anyway. So you are increasing the likelihood of having to take a pressure penalty by backloading the best takers, even if they may be better equipped to deal with that pressure.