From 12 Paces

A well-taken penalty is a goal. That's still the conventional wisdom in football. But in modern football, taking penalties well requires additional effort, because the players between the posts now have many tools to help stop them. Today's technology offers us abundant information about our opponents. This can provide a considerable advantage to our team, and specifically to our goalkeeper, when facing a shot from 12 paces away. This means that penalty kicks are no longer simply a matter of luck or chance. Thanks to the information we now have available, the decision of where our goalkeeper should throw himself can now be chosen in advance, long before the ball is kicked. The methodology for making that decision is the backbone of the technique that the experienced goalkeeper coach Fernando Gayoso successfully applied at Boca Juniors and now shares in this book.