FIFA Is Right: The Penalty Shootout Should Adopt the Tennis Tiebreak Format

Abstract

In the current penalty shootout system of soccer, the team going second has to play catch-up. This possibly carries a bias in favor of the team going first. We consider this hypothesis by taking data from both soccer penalty shootouts and tennis tie breaks. We find the bias does exist in soccer, but not in tennis. This suggests the penalty shootout should adopt the tennis tiebreak format to remove the bias, as recently advocated by FIFA.