Penalty Stats

[Big Cat]

Curious about the number of penalties awarded in the World Cup, I've dug up some numbers
Since the 92-93 season the penalty count in the Premier League has averaged 100 spot kicks per season. There are 380 games each year and the number of penalties has remained fairly steady (I'll spare you the Standard Deviation!). So that's 0.26 per game
The World Cup thus far has seen 18 penalties in 34 games. That's 0.53 per game, exactly double (near enough)
In part, this is down to a positive correlation in the number of identified infringements, which is not offset by an equal number of overturned awards
Whilst more games decided by PKs strikes me as a bad thing (because the punishment doesn't often match the crime), not even I can pin the anomaly entirely on the mast of VAR. That's because of the Law of Big Numbers (380x25 seasons is a far greater number than 34), but it is likely that VAR is statistically skewing the number
I noticed @RobOda has 20/24 stats (0.83) whereas my own count was 9/48 (0.19) for the season, so this shows how dramatic differences can be when the game count is relatively low

 

[AlexF]

18 (so far this year) is tied with the record, and it was set in 2014... in just over half the games thus far.

 

[Sheffields Finest]

Bit soft on pens so far for me, if you allow come dancing at the back stick then you’ve got a high threshold for not giving them!

I used to get a bit of jip from my Div 1 boys when I gave these and other refs seemed blind to them!

 

[santa sangria]

I think there are a couple of other factors.

One is that teams don't look as well drilled defensively as expected. My memory is that a lot of teams come to international tournaments and defend well. And that just hasn't happened. Every team looks leaky at the back. There are mistakes at the back. Games are messy around the box.

The other is the weird refereeing, where loads is going unpunished. There is no way the Panamanians do that in the box if they haven't seen other teams get away with it. We expect subtle holding from great Italian sides to go unpunished but not the insanity of this group stage. But there's a more subtle effect - if defenders go into challenges thinking they can get away with more they take more risks - I think that might also explain some of the messy stuff in the box.

 

[RobOda]

There probably should have been a few more penalties at this World Cup. We've had the weird situation with holding at corners not being dealt with, which Panama thought they could continue in an excessive fashion.

At an elite league though, I kind of expect less penalties and more consistent penalty statistics because the level of quality is higher, the defensive awareness is superior. Tactics and formations come into play - we'll see more of a defensive shield in midfield and so on. - Saying that, there are lots of penalties that haven't been given in the Premier League, so maybe we'll see more there with VAR, who knows?

I'm not sure how useful my own penalty statistics are though! They may simply imply that I'm a strict referee or something. But the biggest thing I can think of is that the leagues I officiate in are mixed leagues. That is, they mix the first teams in with reserve teams. That leads to more mismatches, and from what I can see, a lot of my penalties were given in games where there were mismatches, implying one team was able to attack for 95% of the match and essentially, as always happens at this level, mistakes get made, concentration slips and hey we have a penalty.

I'm interested in seeing how my stats are next season, as the league is being reformed to remove the reserves into their own reserve leagues again. But who knows, at this level I think statistics are very unreliable.

 

[cwyeary]

The Econmist dug into the numbers with so many PKs in the World Cup.

In the leagues with VAR, only South Korea had a noticeable increase in PKs compared to the pre-VAR days, but it seems to have returned to normal this season. Otherwise, the six VAR leagues have had the standard 0.25 to 0.35 PKs per game that BC mentioned. What's happening at the World Cup is a big outlier and the crazy thing is we could have easily had an additional 5 to 8 PKs.

I do have a theory though. These six leagues represent 210 of the players at the World Cup. That means 72% of the players at the World Cup have little to no experience with VAR before this. Most of those players have now played TWO games with VAR. Meanwhile, over the course of an entire league season (35 to 40 games), you learn when not to dive into a tackle in the penalty area. You learn to keep your arms down when a cross comes in.

I don't know if my theory holds any water, but that's gotta be close to 1500 games played without a significant increase in PKs. What's happening at the World Cup is the exception not the rule.

 

[one]

Here is the per game stats compared to previous world cups. My theory is, the referees are calling them more freely because they know if they don't it will be reviewed. Better to be right in the first place than to being corrected on review.