Sports: Soccer: Do goalies cause direction of penalty kickers?

Cognitive Daily one of several ScienceBlogs carries an interesting sports item by Dave Munger, "Can soccer goalkeepers influence penalty kicks?" (Apr24,2k7).

Penalty kicks are nearly universally reviled among soccer fans, yet they remain an important part of the game. The sport is so exhausting that extending it beyond 30 minutes of extra time in a playoff game could be dangerous for the players. Typically in playoff or championship matches, tie games get decided by a penalty kick competition.

But penalty kicks offer such an advantage to the shooter that it often seems like dumb luck when a goalkeeper manages to make a save. The usual strategy is simply to dive randomly to the left or right, and hope you guessed right. Why not just flip a coin to decide who wins the match? Chris at Mixing Memory ["The Science of Goalkeeping" (Apr20,2k7) who/which in turn glosses: Masters, S.W., van der Kamp, J., & Jackson, R.C. (2007). Imperceptibly off-center: Goalkeepers influence penalty-kick direction in soccer. Psychological Science, 18(3), 222-223.] has found a study suggesting that the position of the goalkeeper just before the shot can indeed affect the shooter:

Sports > Soccer, by Sportikos

They found that in almost all instances (96%), the goalkeeper stood just slightly (and I mean just slightly) off center, creating a difference between the distance of the goalie from the two goal posts of about 9.95 centimeters, which amounts to a difference between the areas to the right and left of the goal keeper of about 2.9% of the total area of the goal. The side to which the goalie stood did not, however, influence the side to which the goalie dove as the ball was kicked. So goalies didn't seem to be aware of their position. However, when they looked at whether penalty takers were aware of the position of the goal keeper, they found that 103 out of 174 (I'm not sure what happened to the other 26 kicks) were to the side of the goal keeper with more space. So the position of the goal keeper does appear to affect the direction of the kick on a (statistically) significant percentage of penalty kicks. Penalty takers are, then, aware of the goalie's position.

I underscored the bit about goalies not seeming to be aware of their position sl+tly to one side, but if we follow the Ways of Knowing theory of Herman Dooyeweerd (philosophy) and Douglas Blomberg (educational research), and supplemented by Howard Gardner (cognition and education), we mite say there is a human pre-analytic way of knowing that is kinematic in its orientation to space and movement/s thru it. Dancers and many athletes are gifted in this regard, and spend a career in h+tening it. Gardner says it is a special kind of intelligence, among 6 or 7 others.