Are Penalties Fair? The Data Behind Football’s Most Controversial Moment
The whistle blows. The referee points to the spot. Half the stadium erupts. The other half howls in protest. And somewhere in between, a striker places the ball twelve yards from goal and tries not to think about the millions watching.
The penalty kick is the most debated moment in football. Too soft. Clearly a dive. He went down too easily. The goalkeeper moved early. We argue about them constantly, and yet the data tells a story that cuts through most of the noise. Penalties, it turns out, are far more interesting than a simple yes or no.
The Numbers First
Let us start with the basic truth that every football fan instinctively knows but rarely sees confirmed in cold numbers: penalties go in most of the time. The xG value assigned to every penalty is 0.78, meaning historically around 78% of them are scored. In the 2024/25 season across seven major European leagues, that figure rose to 80.5%, with 563 goals scored from 694 attempts.
That number shifts depending on where you are watching. The Premier League in 2023/24 posted a remarkable 90% conversion rate, making it the highest among Europe’s big five leagues that season. The Bundesliga, by contrast, converted just 69% of its penalties in 2024/25, a gap so large it raises genuine questions about whether something structural is different between the two leagues, or whether it is simply variance.
The consistency across seasons, however, is striking. In the Premier League, only 11.7% of penalties have been saved on average per season since 2020/21. Penalties, the data tells us, are closer to a free goal than almost any other situation in football. Only 0.8% of open-play shots in a typical Premier League season carry an xG value as high as a penalty.
So Is the Punishment Too Severe?
This is where the debate gets interesting. A foul inside the box earns the same punishment whether the player was clean through on goal or thirty yards wide of it. A desperate last-ditch tackle that denies a certain goal and a minor shirt tug near the byline are awarded the same spot kick. The punishment, many argue, does not fit the crime.
The data broadly supports that concern. If a penalty carries 0.78 xG and a clear goalscoring chance inside the box might carry 0.4 to 0.6 xG, then in many cases the penalty is actually worth more than the chance it replaces. Football, uniquely among sports, hands the aggrieved team a reward that frequently exceeds what they lost.
Former players and coaches have argued for a graduated system, where the severity of the foul or the location of the chance determines the punishment. It has never gained traction at rulebook level, but the argument is not without merit.
The VAR Effect
Since VAR arrived in the Premier League in 2019, the game has changed in two specific ways around penalties. First, more of them are given, as contact that previously went unpunished now gets reviewed and upgraded. Second, goalkeepers can no longer get away with moving early off their line, a tactic that was widespread before VAR could check it frame by frame.
The combined effect is that penalties have become even more valuable. More are awarded, and fewer are saved. Research across nearly 3,000 penalties found that VAR-awarded penalties converted at 78%, almost identical to the 77% rate for non-VAR penalties. The process of awarding them changed. The outcome barely did.
The Shootout Is a Different Game Entirely
Everything changes when the penalty becomes a shootout. Research analysing over 50,000 penalties across eleven European seasons found that conversion rates drop significantly in shootouts compared to regular play, and the cause is not better goalkeeping. It is worse shooting. The psychological pressure of a shootout degrades the shooter’s performance in a way that the goalkeeper simply cannot replicate.
The first two penalty takers in a shootout convert at the highest rates, which is why managers consistently send their most reliable kickers first. After that, the conversion rate dips. The mental weight of what each kick means grows heavier with every successful attempt from the other side. Players who score penalties routinely in league football sometimes crumble when it truly matters.
England know this story better than most.
The Fairness Question, Answered
Here is the honest conclusion the data leads to: penalties are fair as a concept and imperfect in application. The idea of punishing a foul inside the box with a direct shot at goal is logical. The problem is in the execution: referees and VAR officials make subjective judgments in real time, and the punishment does not scale with the severity of the offence.
What the numbers confirm is that once a penalty is awarded, the scorer has a substantial advantage. An 80% conversion rate is not a test of nerve so much as an expectation of success. The goalkeeper, standing twelve yards away with almost no statistical chance of saving it through pure positioning, is effectively a spectator hoping the striker makes a mistake.
Is that fair? Probably not to the goalkeeper. But football has never promised fairness. It has promised drama. And on that front, the penalty kick delivers every single time.
Written by Explored Football | Data Analysis
