A fairer penalty shootout design in soccer

06/04/2018

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by   László Csató, et al.

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Penalty shootout in soccer is known to be unfair ex post: the team kicking first all the five penalty kicks has a significant advantage as verified by theory and proved in practice. A so-called Catch-Up Rule has been suggested recently for making the shootout fairer. We show that it does not outperform the more simple Alternating (ABBA) Rule, but the slightly modified Alternating Catch-Up Rule is better than both designs, while it remains straightforward to implement and is essentially strategy-proof.